I understand it was (and still is) common for one railroad's freight rolling stock to be found all over the country. But in the days before computers and other electronic devices, how did railroads keep track of all thier cars? And how would they make income from thier use when used on another road? Seems like a logistical nightmare to me, but I'm sure there's a simple exlplanation.
Waybills and other "paper" that followed the car and reported by the "host" road to the owning road daily or by some semblence of order. It was complex, yes, but precise and usually fairly accurate. Amazingly so. Close enough for American railroading.
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Oh I see. So would this have been an actual paper/pencil log that was attached to the car, or carried somewhere in the caboose?
And another question: Say for example a PRR boxcar makes its way out west, and is hauled for example in a Santa Fe train. While off PRR teritory, could this boxcar be "hired" (or whatever the corect term is) by a customer and carry goods for the PRR while being hauled in a SF train? And if so, I suppse SF would get a cut of the money?
This kind of stuff is fascinating to think about after growing up with computers, barcodes, infrared scanners, computerized tracking, etc.
I'm not sure of the interchange rules, but I believe that an off-road empty (PRR on ATSF in the above example) would have to be loaded with a destination on or in the direction of the owning road (PRR).
henry6 Waybills and other "paper" that followed the car and reported by the "host" road to the owning road daily or by some semblence of order. It was complex, yes, but precise and usually fairly accurate. Amazingly so. Close enough for American railroading.
And this is the reason the railroads employed so many clerks "back in the day". There was a tremendous amount of paperwork involved with this process.
Mike
The paperwork wouldn't go with the car. Clerks kept track of where other railroad's cars were on their railroad and kept track of how many days the car was on their railroad etc. and calculated how much they owed the other railroad based on that. In the days before computers it was pretty labor intensive, but the railroads did it. (Also helps explain why railroads were early users of computers, back in the 1950's).
I think it was sort of a very well documented honor system...the Milwaukee Road did their best to pay what they owed to the Santa Fe, knowing that the Santa Fe would be doing their best to pay what they owed the Milwaukee and so on.
In the day -
A waybill, prepared from the Bill of Lading for loaded cars, would accompany each and every car in a train. The Conductor was responsible for preparing a Consist Report for all the cars in his train as well as preparing a report of all cars set off and picked up during the trip (waybills would be left at the serving station for cars set off and waybills picked up for the cars pick up at the station. The waybills were used to generate the Freight Bill that the customer had to pay. The Customer accounting Department, with myriad of clerks, would handle the billing and collection function.
The Consist Report(s) would be sent to the carriers consist reporting department and a myriad of clerks would perform the appropriate actions to account for the mileage the cars accumulated, as well as the tonnage that was handled on the track segments the train operated. The tonnage operated over track segments was a statistic MofW folk used to gauge the amount of maintenance the various track segments should require.
At junctions where cars were interchanged with other carriers, a Interchange Report would be formulated, indicating the car initial and numbers as well as the location, carrier and date and time of the interchange. One copy of the interchange report would go to the other carrier, one copy would be maintained at the station for historical accounting reference and one copy would go to the Car Accounting Department where another myriad of clerks would generate required reports and settlements with all the carriers one would interchange with on a monthly basis. During the 'manual' era, Interchange per Diem was only calculated on a daily basis....the carrier 'stuck' with the car a Midnight was on the hook for the per Diem (current computer aided systems - calculate 'per Diem' on a hourly basis); efficient bridge carriers (such as the RF&P) could handle a large amount of traffic and be responsible for virtually no per Diem if they could have cars come on their property subsequent to Midnight and leave the property on the same day prior to Midnight.
On class I carriers, each of the accounting departments I have highlighted would be staffed by a hundred or more clerks on a 5 day work week...some carriers even worked some of these departments up to 16 hours a day.
When computers made there entrance to the Railroads all these various accounting functions were where the first computer applications targeted with the resulting manpower savings....savings that were barely sufficient to keep the carriers solvent, if not fully profitable, during the 50's and early 60's.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
And all that paperwork accompanying the train was one good reason for continiuing the use of cabooses until the computer age arrived.
BaltACD delivered the best reply, but from reading all these responses, I note some confusion regarding per diem, the freight charge, and waybill accounting. From the original question, I believe the question is about per diem, that is, the payment by a carrier to a car's owner, while the car is on the foreign line. Every time a carrier-owned car was interchanged to another carrier, an interchange report was prepared. The report might include hundreds of cars owned by a multitude of different carriers. That report, prepared in multiple copies, went to the reporting carrier's car accountant's office at its headquarters. Typically, the Car Accountant would get two copies. The top copy (the original) would be cut into segments, one for each car, and those segments would be mailed to the car's owner. As the car was interchanged, a history would be built up by the owner. For example, a NH car is interchanged from NH at NYC. Then the same car is interchanged to WAB a few days later. WAB delivers it to UP, who hands it off to SP. After unloading, the car is interchanged from SP to Southern, from Southern to PRR, and PRR to NH. It's back home after a round trip across country. When all those interchange slips are mailed in to NH, they bill each foreign carrier for the number of days it was on their system. Whether loaded or not had nothing to do with per diem, nor did any freight charges that traveled with the applicable waybills. That's how it was done when I started working for the railroad decades ago, before computers came along. Per diem was the same for all carrier-owned cars back then. Now, I understand that different cars have different rates and it's all handled in a more streamlined manner, of which I now know nothing. Rails and crossties are about the only thing that's the same today.
Robert J. Irvin
Maybe I missed it, but nobody mentioned that the consignee had x number of days to unload a car before HE was charged per diem.
I often wondered if the car's owner collected the per diem paid by the consignee, and who paid who the per diem fees that were used to unload the car.
Art
.
Per Diem fees only apply between carriers and the car owners....the carriers pay for the time the car(s) are on their property. Private owner cars have a mileage rate that gets paid to the car owner for the miles that a private owner car travels over a carrier, rather than a time rate. Trailer Train Cars (TTX - RBOX - FBOX - GONX) are accounted for by a separate user agreement that the carriers hold with Trailer Train (their wholly owned corporation).
Demurrage is the fee that is charged both the shipper and/or the consignee when the exceed the allowed 'free time' for either loading or unloading the car. Private owner cars do not accrue demurrage as charged by the carriers. Private owner cars, as far as the demurrage value, are accounted for under a trip lease agreement between the shipper (nominal car owner) and the consignee that will spell out which party is responsible for which charges and how those charges are to be calculated...the carriers are not involved in enforcing any of the trip lease charges. Demurrage charges are between the customer and the serving carrier (note - sometimes, with short line or switch carriers, the road haul carrier applies the demurrage account with the customers - there is a private side agreement that specifies the business relationship between the road haul carrier and the short line or switch carrier in these cases).
artschlosser Maybe I missed it, but nobody mentioned that the consignee had x number of days to unload a car before HE was charged per diem. I often wondered if the car's owner collected the per diem paid by the consignee, and who paid who the per diem fees that were used to unload the car. Art .
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