Good evening group,

I was wondering if anyone knew how tires were loaded into a boxcar. I know it’s beyond this groups time frame but especially in the late ‘60’s. Were they just “thrown” into the car or were they stacked onto pallets.

Thanks in advance,

Tim Alund

Tim,

I can't speak for how they were loaded in the era of this list but in 1971 when I was 15 the Southern derailed several cars in my hometown of Belleville IL.  The company doing the clean up hired several of us who came down to look at the wreak as day labor to help. I was about a month from my 16th birthday and they hired me anyway.  We unloaded two boxcars full of tires that were loaded exactly like the photo Drew posted.

Jeff White

Alma IL

Undated photo but the boxcar was built in 1951. The truck is from the 1950s.
Note the placard: "Plumbing Fixtures".
Bob Chaparro
Hemet, CA

Note the tack board...Plumbing Fixtures. Was this a LCL car? And to be specific, it's a 1954 Chevy 3100.

Note the tack board...Plumbing Fixtures. Was this a LCL car?

Looks like a full load of tires to me. More likely sometime in the past it was loaded with plumbing fixtures and no one bothered to strip the placards off.

Dennis Storzek

In the summer of 1966 my summer job between college semesters was as a labor at the Phillips 66 regional distribution TBA warehouse in Memphis, Tennessee. Thank you for the memories of unload trucks with tires stacked as shown, and then loading smaller trucks, using the same stacking method, that delivered the tires, batteries, oil, fertilizer, and accessories to the jobbers.

The warehouse did have a rail siding but during my Summer there never received a rail car. We did receive a number of 40-foot vans that did travel to Memphis as TOFC.

That was a summer for a twenty-year-old that I will never forget.

Cheers,
Bill Keene
Irvine, CA

I never loaded freight cars, but my dad operated and I worked in a Firestone retail store, and we referred to stacking tires in a criss cross pattern as "lacing" tires Standard practice.
Larry King