Transloading

Southern's shippers in increasing numbers are taking advantage of the railway's new service for fast and economical delivery of packaged freight in carload lots to more than one destination.

This plan for keeping freight moving on the Southern is called transloading. It adds a new dimension of convenience, at no extra cost, to the stop-in-transit privileges offered in the past.

Transloading at John Sevier Transfer, Knoxville. From a car of milk products on its way from Jefferson, Wis., to Columbia, S. C., parts of the shipment bound for intermediate points are unloaded onto wheeled trailers.

Take the example illustrated in the diagram on the opposite page. A shipper in New York loads a full car of packaged freight at his warehouse or plant siding. He wants part of it to go to Birmingham, Ala., part to Meridian and Hattiesburg, Miss., and the rest to New Orleans.

To take advantage of the stop-in-transit privilege he pays the carload rate on the entire shipment to New Orleans, plus stop-in-transit charges for each intermediate destination.

Under this familiar arrangement, the railway will then stop the car for partial unloading at his customers' sidings in Birmingham, Meridian and Hattiesburg before delivering the car to the final consignee in New Orleans.

Transportation costs him considerably less than if he had shipped all the freight direct to his customers by less carload service. But there are disadvantages. Each unloading stop delays the delivery of freight to the following customer. After every partial unloading, the rest of the car's contents have to be rebraced and secured for the next move.

Now for the same charge the shipper can choose instead to have his car transloaded at Atlanta, Ga., where freight for the intermediate destinations will be transferred to separate cars for immediate delivery to the other three cities.

Shipper and receiver gain obvious advantages in time and convenience. In little more than the time required to unload freight at one in-transit stop the transloaded shipment reaches the warehouses of four different consignees in cities hundreds of miles apart.

Using transloading service a shipper can route portions of an original carload shipment to as many as three intermediate points in addition to the final destination of the car. Freight transfers where these p ortions may be shifted to separate cars are strategically located through the center of Southern's territory at Spencer, N. C., Chattanooga and Knoxville, Tenn., Birmingham, Ala., and Atlanta, Ga.

The map below shows in graphic form the route of a transloading movement from New York transloaded at Atlanta into separate cars for intermediate deliveries at Birmingham, Meridian and Hattiesburg, with final delivery at New Orleans. Note, too, how other transloading points (marked by white crosses) are located to facilitate routing shipments throughout the railway.

Agents' records at the three busiest transloading points ( Chattanooga, Spencer and Knoxville) indicate that shippers of packaged cereal, household appliances, paper products and canned goods have so far made the most frequent use of transloading.

But the list of products carried in transloading service runs into the dozens. They range from feed to furniture, from steelware to stoves, and their number is growing.

In the present pattern of transloading traffic, a majority of the cars are loaded at off-line points for delivery to two, three or four consignees in Southern's territory.

Many of the cars come from the Midwest, reach Southern at our gateways at East St. Louis, Ill., or Louisville, Ky., or at junction points between East St. Louis and Louisville. Part of the contents may be transloaded at either Chattanooga or Knoxville, depending on the location of intermediate points and final destination. Other cars, from the Northeast, come through Potomac Yard, near Washington, and are transloaded at Spencer or Atlanta. The transloading privilege at Birmingham is provided for western shippers on traffic received by Southern at Memphis or New Orleans.

One of the major transloading movements originating on line (and already a frequent repeater in the few months that Southern has had the service in effect) involves electric appliances from Indiana. These usually go through Chattanooga to receivers in Alabama, Georgia and parts of South Carolina; through Knoxville to the Carolinas and Virginia.

A tractor moves the trailers into place beside the separate cars into which the shipments will be reloaded for rapid delivery to Asheville, Winston-Salem and Charlotte, N. C., while the original car goes direct to Columbia.

Although transloading is not a new development in the industry (it has been used and is being used on other railroads) , Southern is watching closely the early results of its adoption on our railway. So far the signs are favorable.

Month-to-month increases in the number of cars handled in transloading service, and the frequency with which repeat movements show up in the records, indicate that Southern's customers find the service useful.

Though much of its repre!;ents freight Southern would have handled anyway in less-carload or stop-in- transit service, there is evidence that transloading is attracting freight shipments that we might not have had otherwise.

Making Southern's service more convenient for our present customers and more attractive to new ones is good business for the railway and railway people.