Re: Obscure bits of history

When I was in the railroad business years ago, freight bills of lading were used to generate waybills which travelled with the car, either physically or electronically. There was a place on the freight bill where the agent marked either "Prepaid" or "Freight Collect." Prepaid meant exactly what it said, and the car didn't move to interchange until the money was received. Cars shipped freight collect were not placed for unloading until the freight bill was paid. If we had to hold a car more than 24 hours for payment, whether prepaid or collect, we started charging demurrage as an incentive for the customer to open his checkbook.

As an originating carrier, we much preferred Prepaid, since we got the money up front. We had to dole it out to the other carriers in a monthly settlement, but we got to hold the money until the end of the month. When a car went Collect, it sometimes took over a month to see our money, which was sent to us by the terminating carrier. Payments were made "proportionally," a percentage of the revenue based on the mileage a load travelled, with the originating and terminating carrier getting an additional small percentage for the paperwork. If you had to divvy up the freight charges between two carriers, it wasn't too bad, but if there were several, you didn't get very much out of all that work.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/06/2009 03:02PM by Wayne Laepple.