The nation's aging boxcars, many of which have broken down recently while carrying Soviet‐bound wheat from the grain belt to loading piers, have created a replacement bonanza foe Pullman, Inc.Last week, this largest builder of freight cars had a backlog of orders for 4,000 covered hopper cars needed to haul a variety of this year's grain harvest—wheat, corn, oats, rye, flaxseed, soybean—from the Middle West to the rest of the nation and consumers abroad.The market for covered cars increases as the nation's 1,600,000 freight cars now on the rails pass their economic life span. The majority of them are more than 20 years old, and several thousand have been working for 30 years.Pullman began virtual around‐the‐clock production of covered hopper cars early last year and it now has more than 2,500 such ears rolling. Some of them have been sold, others have been leased. A feature of the Pullman covered grain car is its promise to eliminate the risk of damage that occurs with increasing frequency in box cars.
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The doubling of carrying capacity through use of the covered hopper car was part of the impetus when Pullman set up a leasing division in 1960. Recently, two of the major. Grain companies, Cargill and the Continental Grain Company, rented for 10‐year periads, 71 and 100 of the covered grain cars.
Cargill has sold 700,000 tons and Continental 1 million tons of wheat to Russia.The Pullman bonanza results from coming to market with a conveyance that sells for $15,000 at a time when the farmers in Minnesota, the Dakotas and Montana are moving about 9 million tons of their annual grain harvest. Shippers want to sidetrack the old boxcars in favor of covered hoppers.Mr. Crosby, who also is an official of the Grain and Feed Dealers National. Association, said that a poll of the 1,800member association showed that the members were experiencing “frustration at the shortage of regular box cars and a desire to work with the railroads toward modernization of grain transportation facilities to speed the movement of grain to market ”.buring the last year more than 2,000. Covered hopper cars, made by Pullman and by American Car and Foundry Company, the two largest rail car manufacturers, have been placed in grain service.A survey by the grain association showed that the number of covered hoppers has increased 131 per cent in the last decade. In 1953 the natian's freight car fleet was 1,763,000, of which 29,950 were covered hoppers. Last year there were 69,106 in the fleet of 1,611,314 freight cars.
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The number of boxcars has declined in the decade from 737,600 to 638,000.