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[quote user="nbrodar"] I never said it was a maintenance issue.   It's an equipment utlitization issue.  And I'm telling you what my intermodal people tell me. A five pack is not more efficient when you have 6 or 12 pieces to load to a destination (a common occurance in the I-95 corridor).   With 3 packs you have no empty platforms.  With 5 packs you have 4 empty platforms.   And in my corridor, for UPS trailers it's about 75% 89' flats and 25% spine cars. You can't say I'm wrong.   I can count the cars as they pass my tower. Nick [/quote] No one is saying you're wrong.  But you're using anecdotal evidence to support a counterintuitive theory.  Things can change over time. Have you asked yourself why everything seems to move in sets of 6 and 12?  Is that a rock solid axiom, not subject to the winds of change?  What if sets of 5 and 10 come into favor?  And why would anyone only load one UPS trailer on a 5-pack?  Since intermodal equipment is mixed and matched, you can still use a 5-pack in conjunction with a singular car to hold the 6 set of trailers.  The problem with the current 5-pack spine cars is that they are a "tweener" with the 48' platforms, too short for 53' trailers and containers, too long for 28' combo trailers.  If a railcar manufacturer was to build new spine cars today, they could just as easily build a 6-pack with 53' platforms if the 5-pack is out of kilter with the 6 and 12 *rule*. Since UPS favors the 28' trailer, it is logical that those would be loaded onto 89's rather than 53' 3 - pack spines or 48' 5-pack spines.  Spine cars typically have one hitch per platform, so if you're hauling mostly 28' trailers, you're wasting alot of space with the longer platforms even though there's a trailer on each platform.  89's have three hitchs per car, so it's a nice fit for the 28' trailers. A while back Trinity offered a 3-pack spine car with 57' platforms, probably in anticipation of wider acceptance of the 57' trailer, before finally throwing in the towell all together on spine car manufacturing.  This car, if any even exist today, would be easily convertable to handle 2 x 28' trailers per platform, and would be the "perfect" car for hauling UPS trailers.
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