I can't find a defintion for a phrase, perhaps someone here can help.

"The railroads said that the system caused unnecessary empty and cross hauls, uneconomical terminal services, and forced railroad equipment to remain idle."

What is a cross haul? Thanks very much.

Joshua

joshua@joshuakblay.com

> I can't find a defintion for a phrase,
> perhaps someone here can help.

> "The railroads said that the system
> caused unnecessary empty and cross hauls,
> uneconomical terminal services, and forced
> railroad equipment to remain idle."

> What is a cross haul? Thanks very much.

> Joshua

The full context of the sentence might shed some light on the meaning.

Electric City Trolley Museum Association

Thanks for any help...

"In 1927, a number of western railroads brought to the CommissionÂ’s attention the increasing practice of the leased refrigerator cars and the advertisements that many of the cars carried. The railroads said that the system caused unnecessary empty and cross hauls, uneconomical terminal services, and forced railroad equipment to remain idle."

Joshua

joshua@joshuakblay.com

OK, I think I can help a little. First, let's define haul and back-haul. Say a loaded container starts in the Port of Los Angeles and goes to a customer in Chicago--that's the haul. The container now has to go back to its owner in LA, even if there's no load in it, which represents hauling an empty box that's making no money.

Much better is if you can find somebody with a load in Chicago that needs to go to LA, and put it in the empty box. If you can, that's the back-haul, and you make a LOT of money on the round trip.

I've seen cross-haul used to describe two variations on this basic scenario. One is what I think is meant in your quote--repositioning an empty car laterally before starting a long back haul. In our example, this might mean moving the box from Chicago to Milwaukee to pick up the back-haul to the west coast. The box can be loaded from Chicago to Milwaukee (the perfect, most profitable scenario) or empty. Even if it's empty its still better than going all the way back to LA empty.

Another way I've heard the term used is to describe traffic crossing in patterns which means each load of an identical commodity is going an unnecessarily long way. I've heard this in connection with Canadian grain, where sometimes due to wierd economic factors grain from the eastern plains is railroad-shipped all the way to the West Coast at the same time grain from the Western plains is shipped to the Great Lakes. The two shipments cross in the middle, and each is going a longer way than if the eastern grain went east and the western grain west.

What I think you're writer is saying is that sombody (a beer brewer?) invested in leasing a bunch of railroad refrigerator cars and painted advertising logos on them. The shipper then demanded that the railroad ship its stuff in these leased ad-painted cars, even if it meant cross-hauling a lot of these cars empty from one loading dock in City 1 to another loading dock in City 2, and even though the railroad might have had an empty refrigerator car of its own in City 2 already waiting to be filled. This meant that the railroad's own cars sat idle, not earning any money and not getting good backhauls, while the special leased cars were racking up a lot of unnecessary empty miles in crosshauls. The brewer or whoever it was obviously liked it this way becuase they were using the cars as much to be rolling billboards as to be transportation.

That's the best answer I can give--not sure its 100% right, but I think it's in the ballpark.

eledbetter@rypn.org

Thanks very much Erik! My thesis can progress much further now.

Joshua

joshua@joshuakblay.com

The date on your source explains something I learned many moons ago as a model railroader. The "billboard" refrigerator cars were outlawed around the time of the "New Deal" i.e. 1933 or thereabouts. Your reference source appears to be the ARA's campaign to achieve that.

Electric City Trolley Museum Association

Glad to be of help Phil. The words are actually mine, and my thesis is on leased billboard refrigerator cars.

Joshua

joshua@joshuakblay.com