Bruce Smith wrote:

On Mar 22, 2006, at 12:36 PM, ed_mines wrote:

Group, what % of private owner tank cars would you estimate in
the '40s? Shipper marked cars owned by the leasing companies? Some of
these leased cars alomsot look like billboards.

Ed,

Tim Gilbert provided the following information back in 2001.

On December 31, 1942 the ownership of US tank cars was:
Total Railroad-Owned 9,163
Total Privately Owned 140,971
Total "American" Owned 149,426

I'm not sure what percentage of the private cars were "plain jane" and what were more decorated.

Bruce,

Tank Car ownership was provided for the first time in the 1954 Blue Book. The roster totals can be broken down into the following categories:

Total US Tank Cars 158,112 100.0%
Railroad-Owned 6,949 4.4%
Privately Owned 151,183 95.6%
Private Car Lines 111,615 70.6%
Shipper-Owned 31,246 19.8%
Unknown 8,322 5.3%

Among the 111,183 privately owned tank cars, GATC owned 48,134 (30.5% of the 158 thousand total) under its GATX, TCX and other reporting marks; UTLX was second with 42,121 (26.6%) - these two firms owned 57.1% of all tank cars in the US. Shippers Tank Line was a distant third with 12,051 (7.6%).

The only UTLX tank cars having shipper's logos were the few Skelgas cars - otherwise plain black with yellow or gold lettering. GATC had a more "logo'd" fleet than UTLX.

The largest shipper-owned fleets were Sinclair (4,611 cars - 2.9% of the national fleet) and Warren Petroleum (4,180 or 2.6% of the national fleet). In the late 1950's, UTLX bought the Sinclair fleet.

Hope this helps, Tim Gilbert