RAILROADS: Triple-Deck Competition

Stacked three-deep on new split-level flatcars, some 2,000 new Ford and Chrysler cars swept south from St. Louis last week on the rails of the St. Louis-San Francisco railroad. The shiny cargo represented the largest weekly auto shipments the Frisco had ever carried. It also signaled a comeback of U.S. railroads in the competition for automobile freight transport, which a few years ago seemed won by the trucking industry.

In 1929 U.S. railroads handled nearly 60% of all autos shipped. The truckers came on fast in the postwar period, by 1958 had taken all but 10% of auto freight away from the railroads. They could compete on rates but not on speed and service with the big trucks because of time lost loading and unloading cars into special automobile boxcars. The Frisco was particularly hard hit. Despite three big auto assembly plants near St. Louis, the Frisco carried only 9,772 cars in all of 1958, a minuscule 0.56% of its total freight revenue.

Frisco Vice President Jack E. Gilliland, the line’s Texas-born, methodical traffic manager, decided to try “piggyback,” i.e., loading auto truck trailers directly onto flatcars (minus the cab). It found piggyback trains could beat the truck time from St. Louis to Dallas by as much as eight hours, plant to dealer—at a price per car of only $73.90 v., $97.35 by truck. In the first half of this year, the Frisco’s auto shipments rose to nearly 50,000 cars, accounting for 4.4% of the railroad’s total freight revenue.

Frisco’s Gilliland also put Frisco engineers to work to design a special auto-carrying freight car. They devised a triple-deck, 85-ft. flatcar capable of carrying twelve standard or 15 compact cars v. eight or ten cars piggybacked. The Frisco commissioned Pullman Inc. to build a prototype, and after testing it ordered 129 more. The first went into service in August, proved so economical that the St. Louis-Dallas delivery charge was reduced to $65.05 for a standard car, $54 for a compact. By the end of this month, when all 130 of the new cars are in service, the Frisco will be able to haul 4,200 cars a week. More than a dozen railroads have placed orders for the new cars, which will soon be giving the truckers a run for their money all over the U.S.