John Kneiling was a blunt speaking consultant, who wrote a column in Trains for a number of years. His thesis was that containerization would do away with all the costs and slow downs associated with loading/unloading boxcars and switching/classification yards/delivery associated with boxcars and traditional railroading. Essentially, railroads would be the "wholesalers" of transportation; truckers, the "retailers" (RR's: long-haul, trucks: local delivery). This seems to be what has transpired.
I was a Personnel Director of a packaging company in the Chicago-land area in the mid 1970's. We received heavy paper board rolls produced by a board mill in MS, delivered in boxcars. It took something like 3 weeks for the boxcars to make that journey. I was shocked!
It would appear that kneiling's prescription is what has played out. He said the way freight was an anachronism, which needed to go.
Kneiling additionally developed a projected national US railroad map, based on the traffic density and profitability of each line. The mileage was about 1/2 of what existed at that time. Believe his map is the railroad system we have today.
So yes, the boxcar is slowly shrinking from use. But, happened to be stopped by a Belt Ry of Chicago train recently, and there were still a fair number of boxcars in the train, including some brand-new GATX cars. So, some shippers are still finding use for the good old boxcar!
