One-Hundred Truck Convoy -- BNSF Inter-Modal Train in The Tehachapi Mountains, California

by Darin Volpe

Title

One-Hundred Truck Convoy -- BNSF Inter-Modal Train in The Tehachapi Mountains, California

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Darin Volpe

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Photograph - Photography

Description

Piggybacking has come a long way since the Barnum & Bailey Circus first loaded up their trucks onto a flatcar in 1872. When the Interstate highway system of the 1950's opened the United States up to trucking like never before with better highways, railroads had to adapt. Whereas a shipment traveling by rail would need to be trucked from its origin to a railroad facility where the contents would need to be unloaded and re-loaded into a box car for shipment, trucks could pick up the load and transport it all the way across the country. The railroad's solution was the TOFC, or Trailer on Flat Car. This allowed the trucks to transport full trailers to the railroad where they would be loaded onto a train car. Today, close to 25% of the revenue for major US railroads comes from intermodal traffic,

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October 31st, 2020

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