Mobile service centers

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  • May 27, 2018 at 3:12 pm #6098
    princessclyne69
    Participant

    Not sure where to put this, so I chose this section because the use of these vehicles ultimately doomed many depots.

    I bought from Shapeways a Chevy C30 step van, something I’ve often heard referred to as a ‘bread truck’. I’m thinking about turning it into a MoPac mobile service center. I have two photos of these, one parked outside the Pleasant Hill depot, which is similar to but smaller than this model. The other one I shot from the train, while it was rolling down the highway. Really. That one was more like a 15-passenger van.

    So one question is, is there a known roster of these things or some kind of company publicity about them? Also, some general idea of when this started and how wide a territory did each one serve?

    RG7

    May 27, 2018 at 3:25 pm #8777
    princessclyne69
    Participant

    [attachment=0:x7z4e7je]70-10 Jan 71.jpg[/attachment:x7z4e7je][attachment=1:x7z4e7je]68-31 Jan 71.jpg[/attachment:x7z4e7je]And here are the photos. First one is pretty obvious as to location. Second one was probably #2 somewhere in southern Missouri, since the photo before it shows curvy track in a cut that’s definitely not on the KC line. If you know the territory you might be able to tell the highway, which must be on the west side of the track. Date is January 1970.

    Ron Merrick

    May 27, 2018 at 5:44 pm #8778
    peggyrothschild
    Participant

    In the late 1960’s the Mopac began putting on mobile agents in these vans to allow agencies to be closed. As example there would be a mobile agent at Atchison that served the NKD. The agent would pick up bills of ladings, obtain car orders, etc and bring back to a larger city’s Customer Service Center for making waybills and contacting Car Control to fill the orders for empties. The MP would then go to the various states to have hearings to close the manned agencies arguing that the local agent had been replaced by the mobile agent and had no customer duties. These mobile agent positions were later held in the CSCs and customers were provided an 800 number. At its peak MP had 80 CSCs with these being consolidated and at the time of merger around 10-12 including the three border points in Texas. I don’t recall seeing a list of mobile agents or the vans.

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