Evening Republican, Volume 15, Number 212, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1911 — WHERE RAILROADS CAN SAVE [ARTICLE]

WHERE RAILROADS CAN SAVE

New Method of Freight Handling SaM to Be Worth One Hundred Million* a Year. Railroad men who scoffed at the scientific management argument advanced by the shippers in last year’s freight rate controversy are closely watching an experiment that is being tried at St. Louis. Only a few years ago the railroads through almost hopeless congestion of freight at the crop moving periods were brought to a realization of the fact that in their haste to develop new territory too little attention had been paid to terminal facilities. Since then, tremendous sums ’ have been spent to secure easy movement of trains in and out of yards, but in the method of loading and unloading cars there has been no change in a hundred years until today. - t. ‘ In remodeling its freight station at St Louis, the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, as a substitute for the hand pushed truck, installed an overhead electric device for handling freight That change, the first of its kind in the history of American railroading, was made on June 1. Recently the Alton and the Clover Leaf, two other Hawley roads, began to use the new freight station. According to Missouri, Kansas & Texas officials, the net result has been an increase of over 300 per cent in terminal facilities, and a reduction from 45 cents to 30 cents in the cost of handling each ton of freight. On the average, miscellaneous freight is moved by the railroads three times, at an average cost of 33 1-3 cents a handling. According to the last annual report of the interstate commerce commission, the railroads hauled 300,000,000 tons of miscellaneous freight. If by substituting machinery for hand pushed trucks onethird of the present cost can be saved, as in the case of the Hawley lines, the annual saving by all of the railroads should be $100,000,000. And that does not take into account the saving effected by increasing terminal facilities.