Re: [CBQ] Rollers

["Bob Chaparro via groups.io" <chiefbobbb=verizon.net@groups.io>]

Rollers were the result of a practice known as “diversions”.

This was the system by which shippers were allowed to divert cars in transit with their commodities to alternate destinations to obtain a better price for the commodities.  This practice applied to many commodities.

According to a 1909 article in the Santa Fe Employees Magazine, each diversion involves at least two telegrams, a telephone call and a change on the waybill accompanying the car. If the diverted car left the Santa Fe rails, as over 80 per cent of them did, a readjustment of revenue in the accounting department also was necessary.

And as noted, cars moving without a known point of sale for their loads were known as “rollers”.  And a roller could be diverted several times during its journey.  Santa Fe eventually imposed a limit of three diversions without charge to shippers.

To give you an idea how prevalent this practice was, The September 1957 issue of the Southern Pacific BULLETIN (an employee magazine) reported that in 1956 a total of 784,153 diversions were made for 385,489 carloads originated on PFE contract lines.  That’s slightly more than two diversions per carload.

And to make this happen, PFE, Santa Fe and other railroads employed diversion clerks to service the shippers.  As Richard Hendrickson put it, “Diversions alone, therefore, kept a small army of clerks busy at the keyboards of typewriters and Teletype machines”.

Bob Chaparro

Hemet, CA

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