Another rehash of previous discussions but the REA seemed a superior force to be reckoned with. It had a lot going for it and great brand recognition in its day. Considering what UPS, FedEx and others have become today it is not a stretch to think that the Railway Express Agency could have become a very major player and quite successful.
Should it have been so, could it have, did the Railroads err?
In order to survive in this modern road-based world REA would have had to transform into a very similar entity to UPS's intermodal operations on BNSF.
But to fully realize the potential of such a venture REA would have had to realize that its days as a superior force were coming to an end, and that break-bulk express in baggage cars and boxcars had no real future.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
We've had a couple of pretty good discussions about this. And there are outside studies of what made REA 'fail' relative to the growth of companies like UPS during that time.
The whole premise of REA, to me, was predicated on partial subsidy of the trains involved through postal contracts, provision of secure station storage, personnel 'on duty' for other reasons, etc. It only makes sense to develop and maintain a proportionally-sized 'fleet' of local delivery vehicles ... whether they be small station cars/vans or intermodal chassis ... if you have the guaranteed traffic to deliver express on a timely and expedited basis. That is something most current railroading is ill-prepared and unwilling to deliver; they (correctly for them, in my view) gear their models more toward 'just when required' when there is a time component in their pricing models at all -- when considering end-to-end traffic (rather than Z-train-style optimization from terminal to terminal, with 'on-time' and service considerations left to the dray).
When the post office contracts went away, the idea of replacing local trains with what would essentially have been time-critical peddler freights can be rather quickly seen as something either requiring significant vision and lobbying of individual railroads ... or a quixotic attempt to retain the past model of station-based express into an era where trucking had increasingly distinctive competence. Note that this is true whether or not OTR truck use (or abuse) of the burgeoning Interstate network is particularly heavy or relatively inexpensive, but those are greatly accelerating factors that 'should have' induced a sensible REA to start changing some of its operating paradigms.
Could the REA brand and colors been used to leverage market share and perhaps dominance over UPS? I'd certainly think so! I'd think as late as the '50s large numbers of Americans would think "REA" if shipping or expecting to receive express packages, and even absent the large subsidized infrastructure and with the requirement to staff the deliveries with dedicated drivers and handlers I think a case could have been made to 'convert' stations unneeded for passenger trains to at least workable parcel facilities. Be fun to see how local communities would handle the tax bill, though!
Keep in mind that REA's collapse occurred prior to de-reg. I would find it unlikely that the ICC would have allowed what was basically an adjunct of the railroads change itself into what would be primarily a truck operation. UPS was already established as a truck operator and Federal Express moved into that market only after dereg.
Thanks Overmod-- You do hear some of the old heads still grumbling that it was a mistake to get out of the express and parcel business. There is little doubt that it was a shock to the public when it all ended.
It certainly worked well enough in its best years and the future looked very positive. Probably simply selfish of me to think of REA delivery trucks in whatever form, in their classic livery, pulling up to the curb at the house, or pulling into the local railroad station freight depot to pick it up yourself.
When I was a operator on the B&O's St Louis Division I was sent to train with the Agent at Loogootee, IN. The office in addition to its' B&O business was also a Railway Express Agency - it was the serving agency for the Naval Ammunition Depot at Crane, IN. This was in 1966 and the lead in to the Viet Nam War.
NAD Crane did a land office business in shipping and receiving via REA. The B&O Agent had been a Train Dispatcher and gave up his seniority to bid in the Loogootee agency when it went up for bid. As I recall he was getting three times his B&O Agents earnings in REA comissions. The REA business was sufficient that a full car load was set off twice a week, with other daily deliveries by truck. The Agent had to secure a fork lift to be able to keep up with the business.
I left the area in 1967 and have no idea how the 'story ended'.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
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