"Billboard" reefers and other freight stuff

Billboard marked cars (there were more than just reefers that had advertising on them) were generally privately owned cars. As such, they carried the companies products from the central plant to distributing centers about the country. Thus, the Blatz beer car would indeed be found anywhere in the country from LA to Bangor. You'd find most of them tho in the Milwaukee area. Then there were the cars that had advertsising on them of the railroad itself. The UP map cars come to mind here for one. Back before recent (relatively) changes in car movements, cars tended to more stay on the home roads so there tended to be a bit of regionality to the cars on any particular railroad. Today, cars can and do spend a large part of their lifetime just wandering about without regard to who actually owns them.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works every time it is tried!

AJ, Billboard reefers and box cars became the victim of an ICC ruling in

AJ & Bruce,

The 'Billboard' outlaw ruling was only if the car was carrying another product. If the owner was only going to ship his own product in the car, the 'Billboard' lettering could stay. A good example of this was the HAMX cars that carried Hamm's beer from the brewery in St Paul. They even has 50' cars in the 60's with the special Blue/White paint scheme and lettering. The cars were replaced with rather plain standard leased cars due to the cars being broken into while sitting in interchange yards. I worked for the CB&Q in the late 60's, nd the CMO would deliver loaded cars in the 'North Yard'. We needed a railroad cop to watch the cars until a yard job could run up from the Dayton's Bluff yard to retrieve them bury them deep in the main yard bowl. The fancy lettering would attract hooligans within 15-30 minutes!

Jim Bernier

Bruce Fav>

The main reason for the ruling in the first place was when shippers objected to the railroads delivering cars to their plants painted for a competitor's product.

The reefers were not owned by the companies, but rather by refrigerator car companies like URTX, GATX etc. The actual "outlawing" was a rule that shippers could refuse to load a car if it was lettered for a competitor, and the railroad and refrigerator car company had to deliver a different car at their own expense. Rather than face the hassle of trying to keep track of which car could go to whom, the reefer companies simply stopped using the advertising lettering. In the case where a shipper used enough cars that he actually owned the reefer line, the lettering stayed ("Swift" is an example that comes to mind).

Don

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