Momentum Freight's Weblog

Have you ever wondered when the concept of intermodal transport was first recorded by human history? The transportation of freight in container-like transports was first recorded for firms moving coal along the Bridgewater Canal in England around 1780. In a few years we began seeing what were called “loose boxes’ on the steam powered trains of the first railroads and on the top of horse drawn freight transports to which they were transferred.

During the early part of the 1900s there were wooden coal cars moving through the countryside on the Liverpool and Manchester rail lines of Britain. Iron cars would have to wait until about 1840, before they would get a chance to transport coal from the vale of Neath to Swansea Docks, in England.

It wouldn’t be until the first part of the 1900s that the freight transport industry would begin to cover the containers in which it moved freight. This was developed to protect delicate goods, like fine furniture and freight while being transferred from road to rail and vice versa. The normal thing back then was for them to implement a policy, without thinking about putting any standards in place to regulate use. This of course resulted in the service being less than satisfying in many cases and eventually rules and regulations would be put in place to take care of this problem. History buffs might remember “lift vans” which were being used in America by 1911.

The first recorded implementation of rules and regulations concerning the transport of covered freight occurred in England in the 1920s. RCH Railway Clearing House began using standard sized wooden freight flats with a curved roof that were a maximum size of about 10 feet long during this time that allowed the flat to be used as a car transport. At the end of the 1920s the Midland, Scottish and London railroads were providing door-to-door intermodal freight transport services using these containers. At the time this particular service was never adopted outside of Britain and it would be a few years before Americans would benefit from similar services.

The first implementation of a pallet-like transport device was recorded during freight transport operations occurring during the Second World War. The simple concept of a pallet allowed the military logistics experts to decrease the number of workers needed for freight transport operations and increased the speed and efficiency of transport by decreasing the time it took to load materials.

Truck trailers wouldn’t be seen traveling across country on a rail car until just before the Second World War. The first American railroad to use what was called ‘piggyback’ was the Chicago Great Western in 1936. The first big North American railroad to start using piggyback transport was the Canadian Pacific Railway in the first part of the 1950s.