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There weren’t a lot of online breweries on the MP. Lone Star’s plant in San Antonio comes to mind but it was switched by a electric railroad. AB plant in Houston but I don’t recall if it was served by the MP. Longview Texas had a brewery (Schlitz) I think as served by the MP. The boxcars out of Miller were for beer moves (I think mostly canned beer).
The empties coming back to the breweries were billed under a ‘5 for 1’ rule. Meaning the receiving beer distributor would take the loading pallets out of four loads and ship them back to the plant for free in the fifth car. The non-loads of pallets were in an agent’s pool as Miller didn’t want to pay for a customer pool but they liked too having a buffer of cars around.
I remember meeting with the Miller traffic manager (Johnny Myers) who was a rail fan and had written a book on the Texas Electric. He, our sales manager and I went down to the Miller cafeteria after a meeting and I remember being surprised that they served beer to the employees – even those on the dock driving fork lifts.
