A Going Thing

U.S. railroads first turned to piggy backing as a desperate way to fight off the truckers. For a long time, piggy backing -- the hauling of loaded trailers or new automobiles aboard specially equipped flatcars -- was a jerry-built, poor-mouth operation. No more. Business has more than tripled since 1956, and this year is running 16% ahead of last. Piggybacking now accounts for 3% of all loadings on U.S. railroads -- and, more significantly, contributes 5% of revenues. With the help of such new equipment as triple-deck cars that carry 18 new automobiles, railroads are recovering much of the business they lost to the truckers; 25% of all new cars now move out of U.S. assembly plants by rail v. only 8% just two years ago.

U.S. railroads are now willing to lavish funds on this lucrative freight operation. Last week in Chicago, the Chicago & Northwestern Railway dedicated its new Proviso Piggyback Plaza, a 20-acre, twelve-track staging point for road trailers moving by train. This week the Baltimore & Ohio is completing an $11 million project in which 18 tunnels are being enlarged, or are being bypassed altogether, to clear the way for piggy back trains moving west. The Southern is busy on a similar $35 million program on the line between Cincinnati and Chattanooga.

The right of way has also been cleared for piggybacking by the emergence of companies that now buy and lease piggy back cars and trailers, leaving railroads free to spend capital on track and tunnel improvement and such new yards as Proviso Piggyback. The most energetic of the leasing companies is Philadelphia-based Trailer Train Co., whose stock is owned by 35 railroads and by the U.S. Freight Co., the nation's largest freight forwarder. The company started with 530 piggyback cars in 1956, now has 16,000 moving around the U.S. -- and is ordering hundreds of new ones each month. It pays $15,000 for each car, leases it to members. The company is also pushing new design changes, including roller-bearing cars, 89 ft. long that can haul two large over-the-road refrigerator trucks.

Piggyback's big success naturally worries truckers, and Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa assesses trucking companies $5 for moving any trailer that made part of the journey by rail. Despite heavy pressure from the trucking industry, the Interstate Commerce Commission recently refused to reverse its 1954 decision approving piggybacking. The railroads expect piggybacking to double by 1970, eventually account for as much as half of all U.S. freight moved by rail.

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