The Story of IPD Boxcars

Boxcars are the quintessential railroad car of North America. They can carry a large amount of freight and come in many different shapes, sizes, and colors. However, this wasn't anymore frequent than in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Due to a boxcar shortage starting in the 60s, large Class 1 railroads weren't able to supply customers with cars to move their freight. The US government would have to step in and incentivize the Class 1 railroads to build new cars. IPD, or Per Diem Boxcars were the result, as a long list of American shortlines built their own colorful boxcars for the Class 1s to lease out. But where are they now?

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[kurtsunderbruch]

In the summers of 1974 and 1975 I had a summer job working on the assembly line at Pacific Car & Foundry, and worked on boxcar orders for companies such as Frisco, Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, ATSF, and Burlington Northern. There was amazing variety in the ways these orders were built based on the demands of the railroad. Some were quite nice (ATSF comes to mind), and others were just a cheap as possible (SP comes to mind). PC&F built some big orders for Railbox, but I wasn't working there then. My dad was an industrial photographer there, and he kept me apprised of what was going on. The story in the late 70's was that whenever a railroad was putting together a train to go to Mexico that they would always use the Railbox cars because frequently the boxcars never returned from those trips, the and the railroads didn't want to lose their own cars. I don't know if that's factual, but that was the scuttlebutt at the time.

[michaelchristman]

Bring back the colorful boxcars. They made sitting at the crossing a joy to behold. At least for me as a kid, and a big kid now, if not for my parents. I always like seeing the orange Ilinois Central boxcars with its white "i" on a black circle logo.

[thestarlightalchemist]

I love how one of the first shots was a clip from Buster Keaton's Railrodder.

[sirrliv]

This is what I love about this channel. You never know quite what you're gonna get, but it'll always be interesting. I wonder what he'll cover next. The Bopper, maybe? A boxcar that could be converted into a grain hopper?

[jimdennis]

I grew up in a town in far upstate NY of 1500 people. They made the blue St. Lawrence box cars there and I remember side tracks full of new box cars just sitting there... for years. I only have two pieces of my old HO train set. A Santa Fe F7 and a blue St. Lawrence box car that I found decals for and painted over an old Tyco box car back then. That was cool to learn. Thanks.

[kibashisiyoto]

I wrote my master's thesis on this phenomena.

NRUC really over supplied their shortlines (Pickens, St. Lawrence, Middletown & New Jersey) to the point they couldn't fit them all, even if they used the mainline track. Further, they only provided single door boxcars, when the western roads wanted double door boxcars for lumber loading. NRUC also had a strange definition of "utilization" - not the percentage of miles spent loaded, but the percentage of time the car was off the shortline earning per diem. Because the single door cars were a pain in the rear on the west coast, the western roads took action and loaded them to Mexico as much as they could, where they earned less per diem, to discourage NRUC from finding loads to send them out west. NRUC filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the major railroads, which was settled on undisclosed terms.

SSI Rail (which became Itel Rail) was smart and only provided enough boxcars to the participating shortlines to cover about half of their outbound loadings. Those were the really colorful ones - because the paint job went into the base cost of the car, and that increased the amount of per diem they earned. Most of SSI Rail's cars were built by FMC. The deal SSI made with the shortlines was that the shortline would get any per diem revenue in excess of 90% of time off the shortline. So the shortlines often made them to be free runners so they could wander the country.

The returns that could be made just collecting the per diem rentals were phenomenal, and if you financed them you could, at that time, get a 10% investment tax credit plus accelerated depreciation to the point that returns in excess of 20% ROI were possible.

Ultimately, the ICC did not account for the fact that railroads and their customers were rapidly shifting grain shipments from boxcars to easy to load and unload covered hopper cars during the '60's and '70's. So there just wasn't enough of a need for more boxcars.

There's still a few of the IPD boxcars around, but they were mostly 70 ton cars, which are hardly economic anymore. But it was indeed a colorful era for the railroad industry.

My favorite livery - the McCloud River railroad ones with the bear with a fish in its mouth.

[HitsTownUSA]

My favorite boxcars were the old FGE “Solid Gold” logo

[everdc]

I now have a term for the way I run my layout, IPD. Thanks AmtrakGuy
🚂🇨🇦🇺🇲

[violetausterlitz]

I used to see a lot of these being shuffled around between four different railroads where I used to live, and I always liked spotting the really old ones with their original paint. Probably the most interesting were a couple of IDPs lettered for the Ashley, Drew, and Northern, which I did not seriously believe was a real railroad.

[masonschade]

Wow! Vermont Railway and Lamoille Valley, both right outside my home, thanks for including those!!

[loganbaileysfunwithtrains]

Interesting, this is something I never really knew about, I had always assumed that the railroads take the loaded boxcar to the customer and then send it back to “home rails” didn’t ever think that they continually used them over the road and I figured if they did there was a lease agreement and not just per day payment, makes a lot of sense. It’s a lot similar to how modern truck carriers operate, constantly keep their trucks and trailers moving loaded on the road

[cdjhyoung]

The irony around the IPD cars is that what the industry really needed was a simple change in the car routing rules. In the late 1960's, an empty freight car could only be sent back to its home road in the most direct route. This meant too few of them moved loaded in both directions. When the Federal government abolished this rule, it let the freight car fleet move more freely and freight car utilization went up dramatically. Instead of freight trains moving with almost half the cars being empty, now those same cars were more often loaded. Specialization of freight cars did as much to make the IPD cars obsolete as the over building by the freight lines. The mid 70's is when the surge to transform grain movement in this really caught hold. Shippers no longer loaded grain into box cars with paper doors. They now used dedicated covered hoppers instead. Trailer Train did its part to end the practice of transferring trucked freight to boxcars and then deliver to freight houses to be trucked again. Container freight movement also expanded at this time. All combined to end the rein of the boxcar on American railroads.

[rtwice]

Well, this sure answered a question from my childhood. I grew up in a small railroad town, Mojave, California. Both the Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads pass through town with a small switching yard and scale in the middle of town.

When we were kids (the early to mid 1970s) there was an unused section of track out in the desert with about a dozen boxcars sat for years. We had a blast playing on them. We didn't have iphones, Xbox, lap tops, or any of the fancy toys kids have today. We didn't need them. Heck no, we each had our own 50 foot box car. When it got over 110F in the Mojave desert, we sought refuge in our home away from home. If you didn't know the magic password, you weren't allowed in my boxcar.
I always wondered why the boxcars were setting out there in the first place. And now, 50 years later, I know why. Kids today will never know the joy of having a 550sq/ft fort in the desert

[Pensyfan]

Nice short video on these common freight cars.




*DANG* that is an awesome logo in the middle at 3:46! That design deserves an award!

[MLWQC]

That was a great video, excellent vintage footage and explanation. Well done. I have bookmark this.

[jfreelan]

Excellent summary on boxcars, in the diesel era. Gave you a thumbs up.

[AlRoderick]

I really like the incredible variety of amateur provided improvised livery on those boxcars.

[captainkeyboard]

It is nice to know that the railroads are still moving in America. Ships and barges are good for shipping cargo overseas, but freight railroad is better for us. Let us build in America!

[bluebellsfan]

This was incredible! Those IPD Boxcars Looks kinda cool

[gophils]

Thank you for the video, very informative. I grew up during that time. I used to love to watch freight trains back then and all the box cars with different Road names and now I know why.