FREIGHT CAR 
 EFFICIENCY 
 
 By ^ 
 
 ERNEST R. DEWSNUP 
 
 Professor of Railway Administration 
 University of Illinois 
 
 From the Official Proceedings of the Western Railway Club 
 April, 1908 
 
V 
 
FREIGHT CAR EFFICIENCY. 
 
 Of all the general problems of railway transportation there is none 
 more important, more intricate of solution than that connected with 
 freight service. The efficient performance of this service by the, rail- 
 ways has become absolutely necessary to the economic progress of 
 the community; no mean part of the social superstructure of the 
 modern state rests upon it. Hence there emanates from the public a 
 peremptory demand that this function of the railroad corporation 
 shall be discharged with the maximum of efficiency. Inadequacy of 
 organization or incapacity of management affects not only the reve- 
 nues of the transportation companies, but the general weal of the 
 state. It is claimed even, and not without effective argument, that 
 the economic and social loss to the state through such inefficiency, 
 absolute or relative, is infinitely greater than the loss to the trans- 
 portation companies, severe though that may be. As to how far, in 
 theory, this may be considered to justify the intervention of the state 
 may well be left for discussion by the theorists with just the note 
 that, even theoretically, the moral justification of such interference 
 must rest entirely upon the presence of fairly conclusive evidence that 
 the state, by its intervention, can improve the situation, with due 
 regard to both present and ultimate results. In practice, however, 
 the public is not apt to wait for moral justification, and unsatisfactory 
 management leads to a discontent and agitation which frequently 
 crystallize into restrictive legislation of a more or less severe type. 
 Aside from the matter of earnings, it is then to the interest of rail- 
 road management to discharge the functions, for which it is respon- 
 sible, as adequately as possible. Supreme in importance among these 
 functions as the freight service is, public attention and criticism 
 have naturally been directed to the manner of its discharge in a 
 greater degree than to any other aspect of railroad performance. 
 The public demands for the members of its community (a) equality 
 of treatment, and (b) a service characterized by adequacy, expedi- 
 tion and economy. The problem of the handling of the freight serv- 
 ice is obviously, therefore, very complex ; in fact, it is a series of 
 problems rather than a single one. The limits of this paper forbid 
 any exhaustive treatment of the whole subject, and I intend to re- 
 strict myself very largely to a consideration of the more general 
 features of freight car efficiency, noticing the extent to which the 
 railways have adjusted their equipment and its handling to the 
 gio^antic industrial development of recent ye^rs. 
 
 19338 
 
 f 
 
The general prosperity has been reflected, of course, in the growth 
 uf railroad business, which has been positively astonishing. The rail- 
 roads of the United States probably handled, during the year ending 
 June 30th, 1907, in the neighborhood of 1800 million tons of freight. 
 The freight handled by the whole of the railroads of teeming Europe 
 can hardly have much exceeded 1500 million tons. Physical condi- 
 tions, and political prejudices and fears have co-operated in keeping 
 at a low level the average haul in Europe, and, consequently, the 
 more favorable environment here has placed the ton-mileage — the 
 true measure of the freight service of a country — out of all com- 
 parison with that of the older continent. During the years named, 
 the ton mileage of the United States probably amounted to 230 or 
 235 billions, against which, Europe, so far as can be estimated, could 
 not present more than about 100 billions. It goes without saying 
 that enormous difficulties have to be met and overcome in order to 
 administer successfully so huge a mass of business, diffused over a 
 territory of more than three million square miles. But the real ex- 
 tent of these difficulties is not reaHzed until it is comprehended that, 
 during less than a generation, specifically, since 1880, the ton mileage 
 of this country has not merely doubled or trebled but actually sep- 
 tupled itself, an increase of more than 600 per cent. Under these 
 circumstances, it would not be surprising to find the railroads ex- 
 periencing difficulty in meeting the ever-increasing demands being 
 made upon them, nor would it necessarily be discreditable to them 
 that, in shaping their organization to the changing conditions, there 
 resulted considerable friction of adjustment. Accordingly, the ex- 
 istence of shippers' complaints with reference to car supply, 
 founded though they may be on facts, should not be regarded, in 
 itself, as conclusive evidence of culpable negligence on the part of 
 the managers of railroad transportation. Even without any special 
 general development from year to year, every business has difiiculties 
 during the busiest season of each year, in properly meeting the de- 
 mands made upon the resources of its organization. In arguing thus, 
 there is no desire on the part of the writer of the paper to justify the 
 railroads in carelessness of management, whenever such exists, but 
 his object is to deprecate the measurement of railroad performance 
 by an impracticable standard, which the critics themselves would not 
 consent to apply to their own business undertakings. 
 
 In the just-issued nineteenth annual report of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission on the statistics of Railways in the United States, 
 figures are given covering the results of railway operation during 
 the year ending June 30th, 1906, and a comparison of them with the 
 corresponding figures for 1900 may serve as a text with which to 
 introduce what I have to say. The ton mileage of the railroads op- 
 erating in 1900 was 141,596 millions; in 1906, 215,877 millions — an 
 increase of 52^ per cent, of which 40 per cent occurred during the 
 latter year. Though the mileage increased by no less than 31,017 
 miles during the six years, freight business was received and taken 
 
care of so well that the density of freight traffic, measured in tons 
 carried i mile per mile of line, mcreased from 735,352 to 982,401 or 
 about 35 per cent. The mere fact that the railroads were able to take 
 care of this remarkable increase is an indication of the entire inap- 
 propriateness and injustice ©f those general charges of inefficiency 
 which superficial observers, including some writers for the press, 
 have felt themselves free to make. So great an achievement has been 
 possible of accomplishment only by reason of the fact that past free- 
 dom of development (subjected though it has been to certain re- 
 strictions) has stimulated the growth of the most enterprising rail- 
 road policy in the world, admirably suited, in many ways, to its 
 economic environment ; it is not denied that this freedom has per- 
 mitted some evils to thrive, though less during the last few years 
 than previously. 
 
 The freight car equipment during the period was enlarged from 
 1,365,531 cars to 1,837,914 or 34^ per cent increase. At first 
 glance, this compares unfavorably with the 52^ per cent increase 
 of business. That this is not really so is obvious when the capacity 
 of the car is taken into account. So far as I can judge from the 
 equipment statistics, the increase of average capacity from 1900 
 to 1906 must have been close upon 20 per cent. Assuming that 
 this increase of capacity were made full use of, the increase of car 
 accommodation would be 61^ per cent. The enlargement of the 
 freight car was not accompanied, however, by a raising of minimum 
 weights, so that, in some cases, shippers made no practical use of 
 the extra space facility. Hence, we cannot regard the whole of the 
 61^ per cent as an actual increase of facility to the shipping public: 
 it requires modification in proportion as the average car loads shipped 
 by the various industrial and commercial concerns were not easily 
 susceptible of increase. It must be borne in mind that, primarily, 
 the transition to higher capacity cars is in the interests of the railway 
 operator. Subject to a certain amount of qualification, it may be 
 said that, under normal conditions, the shipper prefers smaller cars 
 and more of them to larger cars and fewer of them. But, in either 
 case, the practical meaning of the car to him is measured by the 
 position of carload minimum, marking as it does a very considerable 
 difference in transportation charges. Of course, in the long run, 
 under a competitive regime, the shipper is deeply interested in the 
 high capacity car proposition because its utilization, in preference 
 to smaller cars, means greater economy of operation, part of the 
 benefit of which is likely to go, sooner or later, to the shipper. 
 
 The idea suggests itself here that, while working towards the 
 higher capacity car, the railroads would be unwise to attempt to im- 
 pose it. upon the shipping public unless the conditions of freight 
 movement were favorable, otherwise considerable inconvenience 
 might result to those whose business .organization and relations could 
 not readily be adapted to larger units of distribution. Thus, if in- 
 crease of car capacity were the sole consideration, an increase of car 
 
4 
 
 equipment (but not of car numbers) corresponding with the growth 
 of tonnage to be transported, though theoretically a desirable achieve- 
 ment, might be no small impediment to the manufacturer and dealer 
 in their efforts to attain maximum business expansion. It is to the 
 credit of the far-sightedness of the leaders of railway policy that, 
 while fostering, for several years, the growth of the larger and more 
 economically operated car, they refrained from even the appearance 
 of coercion in connection with their economical utilization. Thus 
 from the beginning of the present century, the increase of car size 
 steadily proceeded, generally speaking without any notable sacrifice 
 of number, but the carload minimum remained stationary. 
 
 The last general movement in the direction of increase of mini- 
 mum carload weights was, I believe, in 1899, when under the Official 
 classification, general weights were raised in all the classes from 
 20,000 to 30,000 pounds, after having stood at 20,000 pounds for 
 third class and higher, and 30,000 pounds for fourth class and lower, 
 during a number of years. At the same time, the Western classifica- 
 tion minimum for lower than third class was raised from 24,000 to 
 30,000 pounds, four years previously the minimum for lower than 
 third class had been increased from 20,000. The Southern classifica- 
 tion minimum of 24,000 pounds for all classes has remained undis- 
 turbed, for all practical purposes, during the last twenty years. Re- 
 cently, however, a movement has set in towards an advance of exist- 
 ing minimum weights, to accord with the very pronounced advance 
 of the last few years in average car capacity, and this has already 
 found partial, though not very startling, realization in the Official 
 classification. 
 
 The policy of the railroads, it is plain, has been marked, in this re- 
 gard, by great conservatism, and they have amply showed their de- 
 sire to allow reasonable time for the assimilation of shipping meth- 
 ods to the improved car facihties. They are hardly open to charges 
 of arbitrariness or inconsiderateness in now attempting to take an 
 active step towards the realization of aims long announced, looking 
 to the more effective use of the car accommodation they have pro- 
 vided. If there be any room for criticism at all, it should be directed 
 towards the actual increase of minimum weights in individual cases 
 with regard to the effect of the same upon existing methods of dis- 
 tribution in the industries concerned. But no general opposition to 
 the increase of minimum weights simply because it is an increase is 
 logically well grounded, under the conditions. 
 
 The possible effect of the actual organization of the distribution 
 of products in hindering full use being made of increased car ca- 
 pacity, secured through the substitution of a smaller increment of 
 higher capacity cars for a larger increment of smaller capacity cars, 
 has now been considered. It may be further observed that changes 
 in the general character of production, while not preventing full use 
 of car space provided, may similarly hinder an increase in car ca- 
 pacity, equalling in percentage the increase of business to be handled 
 
5 
 
 in ton miles, from establishing an equality of adjustment of freight 
 equipment to traffic. The character of the tonnage may have altered 
 so that equality of car adjustment can be secured only by a relative 
 increase of car capacity. For instance, to take a hypothetical case 
 of as simple a character as possible, if the tonnage at the beginning 
 of the period of comparison were three-fourths coal and pig iron 
 and one-fourth merchandise and hay, whereas, at the end of the 
 period, the proportions were half and half, each cubical foot of car 
 space would be less efficient on account of the greater space demand 
 of each average ton of freight carried. To some extent, a movement 
 of this kind has been in operation, but, by reason of the continued 
 marked preponderance of heavy freight in railway tonnage, probably 
 not sufficiently to reduce very materially the effectiveness of increase 
 of car accommodation calculated on nominal capacity, yet it is worth 
 bearing in mind that the real working capacity of a car is not its 
 stenciled maximum, or, rather, that plus the additional ten per cent 
 allowed, but the average tonnage it can accommodate of the class or 
 classes of freight it is commonly required to convey. 
 
 So far as the practical results of American freight operation of 
 recent years are concerned, it is not at all difficult to demonstrate 
 that, coinciding with the movement towards a high tonnage car, 
 there has been a material increase in average load, indicating that, to 
 a certain extent at least, such a car has proved adaptable to modern 
 methods of industrial distribution. To quote a few roads indiscrimi- 
 nately, the average carload per loaded car during the period 1900 to 
 1907, increased with the New York, New Haven and Hartford from 
 
 10.2 to 13.4 tons, with the Norfolk & Western from 19.9 to 25.5, with 
 the Wabash from 14.9 to 18. i, with the Louisville & Nashville from 
 
 15.3 to 18.7, with the Illinois Central from 13.7 to 17.8, with the 
 Southern from 12.7 to 14.8, with the Chicago & North Western from 
 13.8 to 15.3, with the St. Louis & San Francisco from 13.6 to 15.9, 
 with the A. T. & S. F. from 12.7 to 15.5, with the Northern Pacific 
 from 13.4 to 17.8, and with the Great Northern from 16 to 20.4 
 tons. According to the 1906 statistical report of the Interstate Com- 
 merce Commission, the loaded freight car miles for that year 
 amounted to 11,410,599,327, and, as before stated, the ton-mileage 
 to 215,877,551,241. From these figures, it appears that the average 
 load per loaded car of all systems was 18.9 tons. It is impossible 
 to say exactly what the average load was for ,1900, on account of 
 the failure of the Commission to collect and publish loaded car mile- 
 age before 1901, and, ^ the way, their Public Service tables still 
 neglect the average load per loaded car. However, the average load 
 for 1901 was 16.5 tons, and, after an examination of the reports of a 
 considerable number of railroads, I am inclined to think that for 1900, 
 the corresponding figure must have been, approximately, 16 1-5 tons. 
 Thus the increase of average load per loaded car was about 17 per 
 cent. The proportion of this increase due to higher capacity equip- 
 ment and to improved loading methods respectively are not capable 
 
6 
 
 of being determined. After having observed loading methods fairly 
 closely during the period, it does not strike the writer that there has 
 occurred any particularly marked advance in this direction. The 
 exceptions to this general statement are but sufficient to ''prove the 
 rule." Accordingly, I prefer to credit the higher capacity equip- 
 ment with the greater part of the improvement. From 1900 to 1906, 
 then, a twenty per cent increase in average capacity has been met by 
 a seventeen per cent increase, or thereabouts, in average load, indi- 
 cating, as already remarked, the suitability of the high capacity car, 
 within certain limits, to present industrial conditions. From this it 
 follows that the deduction to be made from the Giy^ per cent increase 
 of total car capacity during the period of our comparison, on account 
 of shippers being unable to use to advantage the extra space of each 
 car, is but small, and, assuredly, not sufficient to reduce the per cent 
 increase of effective accommodation below the 52^ per cent in- 
 crease of business. 
 
 In the matter of adequacy of car accommodation, therefore, I fail 
 to see how there can be any reasonable dissent from the conclusion 
 that, under the unprecedented boom of business, the railroads, as a 
 whole, have done astonishingly well in keeping their equipment level, 
 and probably more than level, with the rapid increase of agricul- 
 tural, mining and manufacturing output. 
 
 I say this of the railroads as a whole; thus qualifying my state- 
 ment because there are individual roads of which it could not be 
 made, just as there are other roads of which more than this could be 
 said. Quite a few railroads have not only managed to keep level 
 with present needs, but have even anticipated future requirements, 
 evidently determined, whatever the cost may be, to provide an ade- 
 quate amount of car accommodation for their patrons. On the other 
 hand, there would appear to be roads who are not indisposed to piece 
 out their own inadequate car resources with forced loans from their 
 more plentifully supplied neighbors, a larceny which the current of 
 traffic hinders these good neighbors from effectively stopping. The 
 saying attributed to a certain wit : ''God help you if you get into 
 the hands of your friends" is entirely apropos of the freight car sit- 
 uation in some respects. Curiously enough, some of the roads who, 
 according to the bulletins of the committee of car efficiency, have 
 been maintaining or^ their lines a marked excess of cars (amounting, 
 in one case, to fifty per cent, and, at times, to a hundred per cent 
 over the number owned), ^ have really not done badly in the increase 
 of their cars during recent years as compared with the increase of 
 their business. For instance, in the case to which I have made 
 reference, the company increased its freight cars, during the seven 
 years ending in 1907, fifty-one per cent, as against an increase of 
 ton mileage of forty-four per cent, the difference being still greater 
 
 ^The statement refers, of course, to the period prior to the present abnor- 
 mal depression. 
 
7 
 
 in favor of the equipment when capacity is taken into account. Its 
 record of ton miles per freight car in 1907 does not appear excessive 
 on the face of it, when compared with that of numerous other com- 
 panies. Of course, the explanation of its persistent retention of for- 
 eign cars lies in the nature of its tonnage which is comparatively light 
 and bulky, thus necessitating a larger proportional number of cars 
 than is necessary for roads with heavier freight ; its own equipment 
 was evidently inadequate in space accommodation in 1900 (possibly 
 lethargic car movement played some part) and the improvement ac- 
 " complished subsequent to that date was obviously insufficient to re- 
 duce to really moderate proportions its demands upon foreign equip- 
 ment. The light and bulky nature of the freight carried, occupying 
 much car space per ton, explains also the moderate car ton-mileage 
 record.2 The unfortunate feature of a policy of foreign car detention 
 is that it necessarily deprives other roads of equipment, usually^ at 
 the time when it is particularly needed, so that the whole car situation 
 of the country is disturbed. The railroads of the Middle West with 
 their extensive forwarding business are conspicuous sufferers, and 
 the roads in New England, on the Pacific Slope and in the Southwest 
 conspicuous gainers by the inter-line shuffling of cars. In the old 
 days, when freight was transferred at every junction point, it was 
 necessary for each participating carrier to own sufficient cars to haul 
 the freight over its own lines. It would seem proper that the intro- 
 duction of inter-line organization should not change this require- 
 ment. Of course, the proportion of home and of foreign cars on the 
 lines of a railroad will be determined, to a great extent, by the direc- 
 tion of the stream of traffic. Lack of promptness in handling foreign 
 cars will soon swell up the number of such upon a road with the 
 stream of traffic traveling towards it. Given a fairly dense and 
 growing local traffic, substantial moral fibre is required to resist the 
 obvious temptation — sometimes the moral element fails to make good. 
 On the other hand, roads doing a large outward business but compar- 
 atively small inward must make allowance for this extra drain in the 
 extent of their equipment. They must expect to be regularly de- 
 prived of the use of a certain proportion of equipment, and it is up 
 to them to do the best that they can to keep track of its movements 
 and to secure the enforcement of mutually agreed upon regulations 
 directed towards securing prompt return. 
 
 One of the difficulties connected with per diem as a means of stim- 
 ulating the prompt handling of foreign equipment is that at the times 
 
 ^Heavy freight would have revealed a striking ton-mileage per car. _ The 
 car ton-mileage, at any one time, is the quotient of the total_ ton-mileage 
 divided by the number of revenue cars owned. In general, this represents 
 sufficiently accurately the performance of the average car on the normal rail- 
 road, but not in the case of roads with large standing excesses of cars (or 
 the reverse) ; the real work secured by such railroads out of the cars operated 
 by them can only be obtained by substituting, as the divisor, average number 
 of cars on line for average number of cars ozvned. Allowance needs to be 
 made, of course, for private cars. 
 
8 
 
 when cars are in most demand it is least effective. -Whether the cost 
 of car hire be 20, 25 or 50 cents a day, or even a dollar, it is obviously 
 to the interest of a road short of cars to retain foreign equipment if, 
 during the rush of business, the cars are capable of earning more 
 than sufficient to cover operating and per diem expenses.^ Con- 
 versely, when business is dull and cars less urgently needed by the 
 home roads, low car earnings stimulate the effectiveness of per diem 
 to the cost of, it may be, unnecessary empty mileage. There seems 
 much to be urged in favor of a variable per diem charge, especially 
 if handled, along with the whole matter of car interchange arrange- 
 ments, by some permanently organized central bureau of the rail- 
 roads. This is a tempting subject to dilate upon, but one impossible 
 to discuss adequately in this paper. 
 
 Reference to the problem of car interchange brings our discussion 
 very close to the matter of car shortages, the recent acute attack of 
 which was so dramatically terminated at the close of last November 
 by the financial crisis, whose industrial effects are still lingering with 
 us. The more one studies the car situation in general, the more 
 one realizes that the intensity of such car famines, as they recur 
 from time to time, could be materially relieved if more skillful 
 attention were applied to the supervision and improvement of the 
 distribution and of the mileage performance of cars both in local 
 and in interline business, the crowning difficulties of railroad 
 
 ^Suppose that, during the very active season of the business year, a car is 
 capable of earning $2.50 a day after the costs of hauling the car and handling 
 the freight (but not the maintenance charges against the car) are deducted. 
 The railroad has more business than it can handle promptly with its own 
 equipment, and, therefore, must either build extra cars just for the traffic of 
 this road or it must borrow. If the period extends over, say, three months, 
 then, if it builds, it ought to debit all expenses of the cars to that short 
 period. These expenses, in the case of a modern car, a forty ton steel under- 
 frame box car, for instance, probably average somewhere about 40 cents a 
 day, the expenses of maintenance and renewals being distributed over the 
 year, the car being assumed to be in more or less constant use. The estimate 
 is based on $1,025 as the cost of such a car, with 20-25 years as average life, 
 5 per cent interest on cost of car, $85 or thereabouts as cost of repairs and 
 renewals, allowance also being made for maintenance of repair tracks and 
 sheds and rip tracks, tools and the like, including interest on the capital in- 
 vested in them. But in the case before us, these expenses have to be dis- 
 tributed over but three months, allowance being made for lighter repairs, 
 longer life of car, etc., on account of its more limited use. It is not possible 
 to do more than estimate very roughly the appropriate charge against each 
 day of the earning period but it probably would not be less than $1.25 a day. 
 Thus to earn the assumed $2.50 a day, the railroad must spend (and could 
 well afford to spend) $1.25 a day during the period of the employment of the 
 car if it should provide its own car. But if it borrows other companies' 
 equipment for the period, it will incur hardly any maintenance charges, 
 probably not amounting to as much as 25 cents a day, at the most. So that, 
 under the assumed conditions, there is no inducement for the road to provide 
 its own extra equipment, even if a dollar per diem were levied upon it, and, 
 with a 50 cent or 75 cent per diem, it is considerably in pocket by borrowing 
 equipment which it can send home as soon as it has no further use for it. 
 
9 
 
 operation. In speaking thus, it is not intended to have inferred that, 
 under any reasonably economical system of car equipment, the rail- 
 ways could obviate such shortages. As a matter of fact, the charges 
 of gross inadequacy of equipment, so freely made by choleric ship- 
 pers during periods of car shortages, are based entirely upon the 
 » reasoning that there is a shortage, that the railroads have no business 
 to allow a shortage to take place, and that its existence is sufficient 
 evidence of willful neglect on the part of the railroads to provide a 
 proper amount of equipment. No consideration is given to the rela- 
 
 • tion of that equipment to business requirements during the periods 
 when surpluses take the place of shortages nor to the possible loss 
 which may result to a railroad maintaining an extra supply of cars 
 whose service is necessary, perhaps, only three months out of the 
 twelve. Unless the daily earnings of such cars during the limited 
 period of their necessary service are sufficient to cover not only the 
 costs of handling the freight, of moving the cars, of use of roadbed, 
 terminals, motive power and so forth, but also interest on capital in- 
 vested in the cars, maintenance charges, depreciation and insurance, 
 and storage accruing during the whole year, it is patent that the pro- 
 vision of such cars would be a pure act of charity on the part of the 
 railroads, and in no sense a commercial transaction. I am not going 
 to assume gratuitously that it would be necessarily unprofitable for 
 any specified railroad to provide this extra equipment, but note the 
 possibility as something that needs to be investigated before charges 
 of incompetent management are rested simply on shortages in car 
 supply during busy seasons. And in connection with estimation of 
 car shortage, it should be noticed that the extent of the same is not 
 accurately measured by shippers' demands, since they frequently 
 order more cars than they really need in the hope of securing a 
 larger number than they would otherwise be likely to do. The actual 
 shortage at any date is, undoubtedly, less by a considerable percentage 
 than the total of the shippers' nominal requirements. 
 
 Moreover, while this shortage is a very real difficulty at the times 
 of its recurrence, it is, in large measure, the result of a tendency on 
 the part of shippers to keep their stocks down to the working mini- 
 mum, frequently involving procrastination in the ordering of their 
 supplies. An annual example of this is to be found in the coal trade 
 in which the dealers regularly fail to make long enough preparation 
 ahead for the fall trade, so that, with the advent of the cold season, 
 
 * orders for cars are rushed in with instructions that they are to be 
 treated as urgent. They (and many others) are anxious to combine 
 all the advantages of keeping as little capital as possible tied up in 
 
 , their stocks with an absence of all the disadvantages that naturally 
 
 attach to the undue crowding of business. A little earlier prepara- 
 tion, even if at the expense of tying up more capital in the shape of 
 stocks and storage facilities, would, in many cases, be entirely reason- 
 able, and a legitimate expense of the business. At any rate, if this 
 natural organization of their business arrangements is not attended 
 
!() 
 
 to, such traders hardly ought to feel aggrieved if their aggregated 
 demands make it impossible for the carriers to reply as promptly as 
 they desire. 
 
 From what has been said, it must not be supposed that the rail- 
 roads, on their side, are keeping down equipment to the level of the 
 traffic of the least active seasons. As a matter of fact, they are 
 providing cars in marked excess of this, and an appreciable portion 
 of their equipment is lying idle or running light during the ' 'off" sea- 
 son. The actual extent of their equipment is a compromise between 
 the requirements of the periods of maximum and minimum trade. 
 The railroads, of course, will continue to increase equipment so long 
 as there is a reasonable profit arising from the receipts of the car 
 during its active period after deducting the charges against it dur- 
 mg both active and inactive periods. It is not easy to see how 
 more than this can be expected from the railroads,^ though it may 
 happen, in consequence, that cars demanded during only three or 
 four months of the year are not supplied. Shippers do not always 
 realize that the surplusage of cars is quite as important a matter to 
 the railroads as shortage is to them. The railroads are most keenly 
 interested, naturally, in balancing supply with average demand, 
 though even then they are liable to be hit pretty hard by business 
 depressions, as witness the 300,000 car surplus during the past two 
 months, the expense of whose enforced idleness (if cost of repairs, 
 renewals, insurance, interest and storage be considered as distrib- 
 uted equally throughout the year) can hardly have been less than 
 four and a half million dollars. 
 
 There are then, difficulties on both sides. But I have already in- 
 dicated that shortage evils are accentuated among the roads them- 
 selves by the action of certain companies in persistently retaining 
 and improperly using the equipment of other lines, thus reducing 
 the pressure upon themselves, but, at the same time, causing it to be 
 more widespread. Per diem arrangements so far tried, though an 
 improvement upon the old mileage system, have failed to bring 
 about an equitable distribution. A resort to car pooling methods 
 really appears to be the only alternative, if economy of equipment 
 is to be a consideration at all. Granted that capable administrators 
 can be found to take charge of such pools — and no one familiar 
 with the official personnel of the railroads would deny this — their 
 influence upon the car situation in general would be very real. Pos- 
 sibly, there could be established district pools with jurisdictions 
 covering, say, Official classification territory, Southern classification 
 territory, the Southwest, the St. Paul, Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas 
 City and Denver territory, and the territory between the latter and 
 the Pacific Coast, each of these district pools focussing in a central 
 distributing office, which would receive full reports from the dis- 
 
 *In the matter of car equipment, that is, as apart from the question of car 
 movement. 
 
II 
 
 trict pools and would arrange for transfer of equipment from dis- 
 trict to district when necessary. In each district, the pooling prm- 
 ciple could be made to apply separately to each of the major varie- 
 ties of cars, and, possibly, though the practicability of this is not 
 quite clear, with a rough reference to their capacities. I have suffi- 
 cient faith in the genius of the American railwayman to believe 
 that the details of some such plan could be worked out satisfactorily. 
 It is not unnatural that reluctance to enter into a car pool arrange- 
 ment should arise from the dislike of some roads to hand over the 
 management of part of their equipment to an external authority, 
 and from a fear that they will thereby get the worst of the transac- 
 tion. Indeed, it is very likely that, during the formative period and 
 early operation of such a scheme, equitable distribution would fail, 
 at times, to be attained, but, in the long run, it would surely work 
 out to the general advantage of all the roads concerned, except m 
 the case of those who now habitually rely upon other people's sup- 
 ply to make good their own deficiences, and these we are not called 
 upon to take into consideration. 
 
 Before concluding this paper, I should like to supplement the 
 figures, with which the discussion of adequacy of car equipment was 
 introduced, with one or two more relating to the cognate and equally 
 important question as to how far such equipment is used efficiently. 
 We have seen that the typical car of 1906-7 is considerably larger 
 in capacity than the typical car of 1900 ; it is also performing a some- 
 what greater actual service. The real efficiency of a freight car is 
 the resultant of two forces, if I may borrow the language of Mechan- 
 ics, one the average load, the other the mileage it covers, that is, its 
 average rate of movement. Put into figures, the measure of this 
 product in 1906 was 117,450 ton miles as against 103,700 ton miles, 
 in 1900, an increase of 13,750 ton miles per car, equivalent to lyA 
 per cent.5 The average load for 1900 has been estimated at 16 1-5 
 tons, and from this it follows that the loaded miles per car averaged 
 6,285 • in 1906, the corresponding figure was 6,208. This indicates 
 a backward movement so far as the "matter of car movement is con- 
 cerned. But there are reasons why this result should not be ac- 
 cepted at its face value. By reason of the absence of proper statisti- 
 cal data covering the whole of the railway systems of the country 
 during the years of comparison, I have been obliged to base the 
 loaded mileage performance of each car upon the number of revenue 
 cars owned at the end of the fiscal years. Obviously, the car mile- 
 age is made by the average number of cars owned throughout the 
 year. If it were to be assumed that the net increase of cars, during 
 1900 and 1906 respectively, took place uniformly during these years, 
 then the figures given above would be changed to 6,450 and 6,396, 
 the decrease of miles per car being thereby reduced from 77 to 54. 
 In dealing with the comparison of individual railroads, it would be 
 necessary to take into account the fact that, at different periods and 
 with different roads, the proportion of cars used in making the mile- 
 
12 
 
 age to cars owned may vary, but, in dealing with all systems col- 
 lectively, this is obviously unnecessary. 
 
 A further reason for neglecting the apparent decrease in car mile- 
 age lies in the omission of privately owned cars from the calculation, 
 though the results of their movement are included in the record of 
 total loaded car miles. If the proportion of private cars were the 
 same in 1906 as in 1900, the net decrease as shown above would be 
 slightly reduced, though the percentage of decrease would not be 
 altered, of course. Private car statistics are not available but I 
 should take it as unlikely that such cars attained quite as large an 
 increase (relative) as railway owned cars, and, if this be true, a 
 more appreciable reduction in both the absolute and the percentage 
 decrease took place. For instance, private cars in 1900-1 were esti- 
 mated to equal from seven to eight per cent of railway freight car 
 equipment. If, during the following six years, they increased but 
 twenty per cent in number as against the thirty-five per cent of rail- 
 way owned cars, the net decrease of loaded car miles per car would 
 be reduced from 54 to 19. 
 
 A still additional reason for modifying the result first arrived at 
 is to be found in the varying nature of railway tonnage over the 
 period. Coal and other mine traffic tends to limit the mileage per- 
 formance of the cars engaged in it and, when such traffic increases 
 more rapidly in volume than the rest, the effect upon general car 
 mileage average is depressive. Undoubtedly; this has taken place, 
 to a certain extent. The products of mines in 1906 accounted for 
 more than 53 per cent of total originating tonnage, whereas, in 1900, 
 the proportion was slightly over 52^ per cent. Mineral ton mileage 
 and car mileage figures are not accessible but, no doubt, this move- 
 ment is reflected in them, and though the difference in percentage is 
 hardly large enough to exert much influence upon the average per 
 car, it would probably be sufficient to wipe out the decrease with 
 which the present analysis of car mileage averages started. 
 
 It is satisfactory to find that, the railway freight service being 
 taken as a whole, there has been no absolute retrogression in the 
 movement efficiency of the freight car, and yet unsatisfactory not to 
 be able to say more than this. The efficiency of the freight car of 
 1906 over the car of 1900 is due entirely to improved load: there 
 has apparently been no appreciable improvement in the average 
 number of miles travelled per annum. Except in so far as the trader 
 was able to secure lower rates, a supposition hardly justified by the 
 facts, the benefits of the increased efficiency of the freight car dur- 
 ing the period 1900-06 must' be regarded as having been in favor of 
 the railroad rather than the trader. 
 
 It is a somewhat remarkable fact that the power and ability dis- 
 played by railroad managers in so many directions has been unable 
 to secure tangible improvement in a matter which is more vital than 
 most thinc^s to the really economical and successful handling of a 
 railroad. In scnnnin^- the results of freight operations during the 
 
13 
 
 half dozen years covered by the main figures of this paper, one may 
 observe with pride the handHng of an increase of business of 52^^ 
 per cent, with a train mileage increase of but 14 per cent (492 >^ 
 millions to 559^^ million miles), and a consequent increase in train 
 load of 42 per cent (271 to c. 385 tons), accompanied by an increase 
 of 17 per cent or more (c. 16.2 to c. 18.9 tons) in car loading, but 
 car mileage— the less said about it the better ! Perhaps, it is incapable 
 of improvement ! But the query is inevitably provoked as to whether 
 some of the improvements named have been purchased at too high 
 a cost. The bulletins of the committee on car efficiency reveal great 
 differences between the various roads in the mileage results obtained 
 from their cars. Unquestionably, varying physical and economic 
 conditions play an important part in these differences, yet one can- 
 not help but beHeve that the personal equation, the organization of 
 the railroad, is no trivial factor. To take but one illustration, the 
 reports published impress one with the idea that a great deal of rnis- 
 applied economy is frequently exercised with regard to shop repairs. 
 No doubt, a road hauling heavy tonnage over adverse grades and 
 around sharp curves must expect to be troubled more with the ques- 
 tion of car repairs than a road working under the reverse condi- 
 tions. Yet even in this case, the loss of car time may be seriously 
 increased by lack of proper provision of shop facilities, usually a poor 
 kind of economy, and, to the extent to which shop repairs accumu- 
 late, a lessening of the effective equipment of the road. In studying 
 the returns covering July 1906, to August, 1907, one is surprised, 
 again and again, by the high percentages of cars in shops, and high 
 not merely during the period of slack business. Some roads appar- 
 ently maintain, during the major part of the year, eight, nine, ten 
 per cent of their freight equipment, or even more, as shop ornaments. 
 More attention needs to be given to shop policy, and, one might add, 
 to the treatment cars receive in the yards ; with the needed improve- 
 ment, one hindrance to better freight car performance will be re- 
 moved. 
 
 Yard working -affords even more fruitful opportunities of im- 
 provement. Terminal yard delays is a vexed problem that is appar- 
 ently eternal in nature. Poor yard design, or, to be more correct in 
 many cases, lack of design, has been condemned again and again 
 as too common a feature, but it is by no means an unknown thing 
 to find the evils of bad design supplemented by those of poor organ- 
 ization and still poorer management. I think a mistake has been 
 made frequently in locating terminal yards too near the centers of 
 the cities, though sometimes the growth of a city has been so rapid 
 as to reach out to fairly distant sites, crippling the possibilities of 
 their expansion by the immense resulting increase in land values. 
 Again the storage privileges of terminal yards have been notably 
 abused : to judge by the space which railroad managements are often 
 prepared to assign to storage tracks in response to the ''needs" of 
 the shippers, they do not always realize that, in the' physiology of the 
 
14 
 
 yard system, the function of the storage yard is about that of the 
 vermiform appendix. It is satisfactory to note, however, that 
 demurrage regulations are being rounded into more uniform shape 
 over the country at large and, with their steady enforcement, less 
 trouble from shippers' delays can be expected. 
 
 Much more could be profitably said about the influence upon 
 loaded car mileage of such trans-shipping arrangements as the 
 Pennsylvania provide at Fort Wayne for the making up of "through" 
 loaded cars at that point, thus reducing the pressure upon the Chi- 
 cago yards, and much more upon the general extension of ''con- 
 solidation" arrangements in relation to both increased average load- 
 ing and mileage. A further interesting question is that of adequacy 
 of motive power and the desirable ratio of such power to freight busi- 
 ness and equipment : in this matter, as in so many others, there are 
 marked differences in the practices of the various roads, the justifi- 
 cation of which it would be desirable to have explained. These and 
 many other sides of the question of freight equipment efficiency must 
 regretfully be excluded from a paper already over-long, but I hope 
 that some of the speakers will favor us with their opinions upon these 
 subjects. 
 
 The lack of progress along the lines of car mileage is in such 
 astonishing contrast with improvement in other branches of rail- 
 road operation, that everyone feels that something should be done 
 to remedy the situation. There are many factors contributing 
 towards a low daily car-mileage which are unavoidable, but advance 
 along the lines suggested, and, perhaps, more radical measures, will 
 certainly do something towards raising the present standard. 
 
 ADDENDUM. 
 
 The previous statisticaV analysis rests upon figures covering the 
 operations of all systems, both large and small, during the years 
 1900 to 1906. It will be interesting to see how the general results 
 are borne out and, indeed, emphasized, over a larger period, by the 
 statistics of a group from which very small roads are excluded. 
 
 These are compared below, in the case of thirty-one railroad sys- 
 tems, some of the operating results of 1907 with the corresponding 
 ones of 1897, a ten year period. The roads whose statistics were 
 available are the following (arranged in alphabetical order) : 
 
 AGS C. C. C. & St. L. K. C. S. N. P. 
 
 A. T. & S. F. and P. & E. L. & N. ^enna. R. R. 
 
 B &0 CM. & St. P. M. C. T^o-kls. 
 
 B &M C. N. O.&T. P. M.&O. St. L.&S.F. 
 
 c'ofG Frie. Mo. Pacif. and St. St. L. S. W. 
 
 C & O G. N. L. I. M. & S. Southern. 
 
 c'&e'i G. T. N. Y. C. &St. L. T.&P. 
 
 C.&N.W. I.e. N.&W. U. P. 
 
 WabTsh. 
 
• s 
 
 In 1907, these railroads were handling considerably more than 
 half the railroad traffic of the country, and hence, in spite of some 
 prominent omissions, are well representative of the more important 
 systems. They owned 538,830 revenue freight cars in 1897 ^"^^ 
 1,065,548 in 1907, an increase of 97.8 per cent. In calculating the 
 . average capacity of these cars, I have been compelled to omit, in 
 1897, the L. & N., N. P., Rock Is., Mo. Pacific, B. & O., St. L. & 
 S. F., Southern, C. of G., and K. C. S., representing a total of 140,074 
 cars, on account of average capacity for that year not being ascer- 
 ^ tainable, but I have added to the list previously given the C. B. & Q. 
 
 with 36,469 cars. For 1897, accordingly, the average capacity has 
 been based upon 23 roads with 435,225 revenue freight cars, having 
 a total capacity of 9,780,211 tons, thus giving an average capacity 
 of 22>^ tons. For 1907, I have had to exclude four roads, the L. & 
 N., C. of G., K. C. S. and Mo. Pacific, with 94,348 cars, but have 
 again added the C. B. & Q. with 47,164 cars, making a net total of 
 1,018,364 cars, having a total capacity of 34,481,517 tons, or an av- 
 erage capacity of 33.9 tons. On account of the large number of cars 
 included in the calculations, the omission of the roads named cannot 
 materially affect these averages. An increase from 22.5 to 33.9 tons 
 represents' a percentage increase of 50.7, from which we can see. 
 much more clearly than in the case of the general statistics covering 
 the shorter period, the really great advance made by the larger and 
 more progressive roads in the direction of the increase of car ca- 
 pacity. When this 50.7 per cent increase of car capacity is com- 
 bined with the 97.8 per cent increase of car numbers, an increase of 
 198 per cent of car accommodation is shown. How does this com- 
 pare with the growth of business handled by these roads? The 
 thirty-one systems handled, in 1897, 53,046,151,280 ton miles; in 
 1907, 136,037,276,970 ton miles, so that against the 198 per cent of 
 car accommodation there has to be set only 156^4 per cent increase 
 of ton mileage. The average load per loaded car mile was 13.4 tons 
 in 1897, and 19 tons in 1907, an increase of 41.8 per cent.^'' This 
 substantiates the statement made in the body of the paper that there 
 has been evidently a fairly economical utilization of the extra ca- 
 pacity of the enlarged car. 
 
 With respect to car movement figures, the 3,901,494,854 loaded car 
 miles of 1897 represented 7,407 loaded car miles per revenue car 
 owned. In 1907, the 7,143,781,875 loaded car miles average out to 
 ^ but 6,704 loaded miles per car owned, an apparent decrease of 9>^ 
 per cent. With some of the most important roads included in the 
 averages, the decrease reaches as high as 15^ to 19 per cent. As 
 noted already, these percentages would undoubtedly undergo reduc- 
 
 ^The average is based on the 31 roads named in the list with the exception 
 that the B. & M. could not be included in the average for 1897 on account of 
 the absence of loaded car-mile figures for that year. 
 
i6 
 
 tion if adjustment were made for (i) average number of cars owned 
 throughout each year, (2) railway cars owned but not on lines, or 
 vice-versa, (3) average number of private cars operated throughout 
 each year, and (4) proportion of coal and similar car delaying traffic 
 to total traffic. It will be understood from previous remarks that 
 the percentage results can be affected by adjustments under these 
 four heads only when there is, in any of the cases, a percentage 
 variation in the years compared. Should the proportions remain the 
 same, the percentage of decrease could not be influenced by such 
 adjustments. It is not unlikely that some roads would find it ex- 
 tremely difficult to account statistically for the whole of the de- 
 crease. 
 
4