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When I was in the MP Management Training Program and worked at Houston in the early 1980’s, I visited a number of customers and locations where pulpwood logs were loaded on bulkhead flats. Cars had metal floors that were slanted downward to the center of the car and all steel bulkheads, they were specifically designed for the log loading. Up and down the mainline from Houston to Palestine were loaders of pulpwood, loaded destinations included paper mills in New Waverly, TX and Pasadena, TX. Locals operating out of Spring and Palestine would distribute the cars based on customers orders, most of the loading occurred on team and house tracks that had good truck access. The business declined in the late 1980’s and was pretty much over during the early 1990’s. SP ran unit trains of wood chips and pulpwood on their main line through East Texas to Pasadena through the 1990’s, the unit train operation enabled them to make a go of it longer than MP, later UP.
