Lumber reconsignments pre-UP merger

[peggyrothschild]

Nate Obermeyer asked me in an email about lumber shipments being routed on to the Northern Kansas branchlines. Here’s some background pre-UP routing through North Platte.

A broker would buy a load of lumber out of Canada or the PNW and bill the car to themselves to a Mopac destination on a branch line. They’d also show themselves as the shipper to hide the true lumber producer. I specifically recall Topeka being one point and Nate interviewed former employees on the NKD handling these cars. The lumber tariff may have listed the ‘hold’ points so the brokers couldn’t get too creative nor did we want lumber loads being held in the classification yards.

The broker would (hopefully) sell the car enroute to a lumber yard and the destination on a branch (usually tri-weekly service) gave them additional transit time to find a buyer. The car would be reconsigned in route and the waybill changed with the new destination and receiver. Per the tariffs there was one free diversion/reconsignment. It the car wasn’t sold, and reached Topeka as example, it was placed in hold for diversion and went on demurrage until new billing was received. An example would be cars originated off SP Oregon and would be routed SP-WP-DRGW(Pueblo)-MP.

You other Mopac guys – did I miss or misstate anything- this was almost 40 years ago. Lots of brain cells have went by the wayside. Just glad he didn’t ask about milling in transit or the five for one rules for assigned empties!

[madonnasuffolk30]

Charlie,

I appreciate the information. Do you recall how common these types of shipments occurred? Was there any other commodity that operated like this or was it only lumber?

Nate

[peggyrothschild]

Nate – lumber rebills were very common moves. I asked a couple of Mopac management guys and lumber was the main commodity that moved like this. There were other diversions and reconsignment but this was generally due to a consignee refusing a shipment or an embargo situation and did not happen frequently.

UP had similar moves with mechanical reefer loads (I remember potatoes) billed to North Platte and brokers selling before they arrived there but Mopac wasn’t involved in the routings with most if not all going to the east coast cities.

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