(erielack) Meat Traffic

["Paul Brezicki" <doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net>]

For comparison, during the peak years of 1967-68, I seem to recall EL meat
business in trailers in the 25-30,000 range, of course almost all of it
eastbound. There was very little carload meat by then, and since trailer
capacity is roughly 2/3 of a 40' reefer, you can see that considering the
total for Erie and DL&W, traffic was down considerably from the 1950's. Meat
was one of the commodities where market share loss to trucking was rapid and
virtually total.

Paul B

In 1950, fresh meat was the seventh-most common commodity carried by the
DL&W on a carload basis, with 20,232 carloads carried during 1950. Compare
this to the 153,051 carloads of coal (anthracite and bituminous coal)
carried the same year. Essentially all of the meat traffic originated
off-line, with only 22 carloads of meat originating on-line. Of the
20,000-odd carloads of meat, 60% terminated at a customer located on the
Lackawanna, while 40% were delivered to other railroads.

Unlike coal or cement, carloads of meat were relatively light (averaging
only 12 tons per carload) so on a tonnage basis meat becomes less visible.
Ranked by tonnage, meat was only number 17 in 1950.

Over the next four years, as anthracite traffic began to decline, meat
became more important for the DL&W. In 1952 the railroad carried 23,260
carloads of fresh meat, and in 1954 the number increased to 25,741 carloads.
Meat was now the fifth most common carload commodity on the railroad. It
also appears that the bulk of this increase in traffic developed as bridge
traffic, as the number of cars delivered to on-line customers stayed fairly
constant (at about 12,000) over the period.

I also just found a handout from Naperville in October, put together by John
Greedy and Jim Singer. They list total meat carried by the ERIE as 23,100
carloads in 1950, 25,000 in 1952, and 22,400 in 1954. The ERIE had more
overall traffic than the Lackawanna (975,000 cars in 1950 for ERIE vs.
655,000 for DL&W) so the meat traffic was a smaller percentage of the total
for the ERIE than the DL&W, but without the ICC data I cannot say much more.

So, to your question. Was some meat carried. Yes! Apparently a lot of meat
was carried by both the DL&W and the ERIE. It would then be reasonable to
purchase some of those new Intermountain cars you also mention.

Michael Mang




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