Richard Hendrickson wrote:

On Jan 28, 2007, at 10:50 AM, Kurt Laughlin wrote:

I'm thinking it might be Shipper's Car Line in SHPX marks. Has anyone
ever racked out the common types vs. users? I realize that the
variety was staggering and the data is not but hopefully there is
something to be learned beyond "The most common tank car was a UTLX
8000 gallon unpressurized, uninsulated"

, perhaps the second through

fifth most common? How about types vs. time?

Shippers certainly got a sizable number of AC&F cars, especially Type
27s (Shippers wasn't formed as an AC&F subsidiary until the mid-1920s,
so they weren't around long enough to get very many Type 21s). But the
SHPX tank car leasing fleet was fairly small (only a fraction the size
of UTL and GATC and not much bigger than North American). Type 21s
went to a large number of private owners (notably Sinclair, which had
the biggest private owner tank car fleet) and, owing to the financial
instability in the petroleum industry, many of these cars went through
two, three, or more owners during their lifetimes. For that reason,
the kind of numbers you might like to have would be difficult to arrive
at.

Richard Hendrickson

According to the 1954 Blue Book about Privately Owned Cars, GATX owned 48,184 tank cars in total, UTLX 42,121, SHPX 12,071, Sinclair 4,611, NATX 4,541 & Warren Petroleum 4,180. In total, there were 158,112 tank cars owned by US Class I RR's, Private Owners & Shippers; GATX and UTLX combined owned 57.1% of the fleet.

In the 1956 Blue Book, of the 161,403 tank cars owned by American owners, GATX owned 48,672, UTLX 45,146, SHPX 13,054, NATX 4,529, Warren 4,489 and Sinclair 3,999. GATX and UTLX combined owned 58.1% of the fleet.

Between 1956 and 1958, UTLX bought the Sinclair fleet, while Gulf Oil bought Warren.

Tim Gilbert

In the 1956 Blue Book, GATX owned 48,672 tank cars, UTLX 45,149, SHPX 13,054,