One of the major costs listed in the 1967 CB&Q Perishable Report was
getting cars to the C&NW Wood St. Produce Facility in Chicago. That
quickly ate away any profit on the carload for the Q. The report had
concentrated on three gateways - Grand Island, Kansas City and Denver.
By far the most potential traffic was via Grand Island and the joint
Q-UP run through.
I was just looking again at the GN wheel reports for 1968. In almost all
cases, produce reefers that were terminating at Chicago were handed to
the C&NW at the Twin Cities. The produce reefers handed off to the Q
were for through connections at Chicago like the B&O and N&W. This
avoided giving the Q traffic which would be a certain money loser for
them. I can not tell from the NP wheel reports if the same is true. But
I would think the Q management made their parent roads aware of the cost
situation. The GN routing actions suggest GN management was aware by
1968 and avoided putting Chicago terminating produce traffic on the Q.
Bill Hirt
On 4/14/2021 12:36 AM, leakinmywaders via groups.io wrote:
So maybe the profitability of the perishables business differed
according to what shippers were located online? Right through the
1960s the NP was still investing in expensive mechanical reefers, ACF
refrigerated Conditionaire covered hoppers, and insulated and
refrigerated trailers. The annual reports, President's files, and
periodicals show a great deal of enthusiasm for maintaining and
expanding the NP's share of shipping for a variety of fruit and
vegetables, both fresh and frozen all across the NP system. Hard to
believe these would have been mostly money-losing investments.
On the other hand, in sniffing through the president's files one does
get the impression that in its final few years, NP management (at
least at its top) was more concerned about gestures providing some
symbolic assurance to shippers that a merger wouldn't curtail local
services, while burnishing the railroad's image with shiny new
equipment, than it was with the profitability of specific shipping
arrangements, commodities, and fleet purchases. In the frugal
Macfarlane years there had been meticulous cost/benefit analyses for
every freight car purchase and lease lot (and for fleet retirement
decisions), but those kinds of analyses are much less in evidence in
the files of the Menk administration.
I know this comment is NP focused, but the largest share of this
NP-originated perishable traffic (and return routings of the cars) was
handled by CBQ, so the Q was integral to supporting it.
Chris Frissell
Polson, MT
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