Semi-tractor trailers and boxcars are two very different pieces of equipment that do the same thing. One hauls cargo down the road while the other hauls cargo down the rails. But what if you could have both at the same time? That was the concept of the Triple Crown RoadRailer, a special semi-truck trailer that rode on the road and on the rails. These innovative trailers delivered car parts and other goods for nearly 40 years but now they’re dead and the reason why is sort of silly.
Triple Crown, a subsidiary of the Norfolk Southern Railway, has long found a niche in the logistics business. There are customers who want the convenience of highway service, that is having things shipped by truck from door-to-door, but with the bulk and price of shipping things long distance by rail. Generally, it’s cheaper to ship a ton of material long distance by train than it is to ship a ton of material that same distance by truck. However, trucks can offer the kind of door-to-door quick service that trains cannot.
What if you want both? You want to slice costs by shipping by rail, but you still like the convenience of getting your goods straight from the supplier to your door with as few interruptions as possible? That’s the niche Triple Crown found and for nearly four decades auto parts suppliers and auto plants used it to help keep their operations running smoothly. Thankfully, this niche is sticking around, but the equipment that permitted it is not.
How It Works
Triple Crown was an alternative to typical intermodal transportation. Intermodal freight involves trucks pulling standardized containers planted on top of a chassis to an intermodal facility. Those containers are then lifted off of the chassis and lowered onto a railcar chassis. The train will then take its load to a different facility, where the containers may be removed from the train and loaded onto another truck or perhaps onto a ship.
So much of the world’s logistics depend on intermodal transportation and in many situations it’s more cost-effective and better for the environment than just sending a bunch of trucks to haul your loads. The Union Pacific explains further:
Intermodal shipments typically fall into one of two categories: international intermodal or domestic intermodal. International intermodal shipments travel in 20- or 40-foot containers. As international intermodal shipments travel between ocean carriers, trucks and trains, the product stays in the same container for the entirety of the trip. Domestic intermodal shipments travel in 53-foot containers. Although these shipments are referred to as “domestic intermodal,” products may still arrive from overseas. The key difference is that after products arrive at a port in 20- or 40-foot international containers, they are transferred to 53-foot domestic containers, whether at a cross dock facility, transload facility or distribution center. From there, they travel to inland (i.e., “domestic”) destinations.
The magic of the Triple Crown Services is that it takes the chassis out of the equation. Triple Crown’s trailers were going around the Midwest and Eastern parts of the United States. They didn’t need to be loaded onto to ships or anything like that. So, a truck carrying a Triple Crown trailer dropped it off at an origin facility, and the trailers would be connected together as a train and hauled to a destination. Different trucks would snag up the trailers to deliver them to their final destinations. This type of configuration is called bimodal transportation.
Triple Crown pitched this as a “highway-like” service because the trailers still crossed vast miles as if they were going down a highway, but up to 150 trucks were briefly taken out of the equation for just one locomotive. The origin and destination facilities also didn’t need the kinds of equipment needed for typical intermodal freight like cranes or side-loaders because again, these were literally just truck trailers lashed together in a train rather than container freight.
As Trains Magazine writes, Norfolk Southern was not the first to come up with this idea. One of the earlier examples of the concept involved the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway (above). In the 1950s, this railroad offered what it called the Trailer Service. Loaded truck trailers were loaded directly onto flatcars and pulled behind passenger trains. The railroad had this service for just a few years.
The official term for it was Trailer-on-Flat-Cars, but it was also called Piggybacks, and one of Norfolk Southern’s predecessor railroads, the Norfolk and Western Railway, also had a similar service:
Fast-forward to 1986 and Norfolk Southern sees itself trying to solve the problem of getting auto parts from suppliers to shops and plants around the Midwest in a fashion that combines the advantages of rail and truck travel.
Here’s what Triple Crown says its current network looks like, note the thicker line between Kansas City and Detroit, that’s the RoadRailer line that just died on Sunday:
Triple Crown Services was launched that year to haul car parts between suppliers in St. Louis to auto plants in Detroit. The service proved so popular that two years later the Triple Crown Services was expanded to include a route between Chicago and Atlanta. By 1993, Conrail collaborated with Triple Crown, opening the RoadRailer network up to America’s East. Later, the RoadRailer would expand as far west as Minneapolis, as far south as Fort Worth, and as far north as Toronto.
I grew up often watching Triple Crown RoadRailers haul freight through North Chicago and have long wondered how it worked. How do truck trailers ride the rails? I mean, semi-trailers aren’t really designed to be lashed up together in trains 150 trailers long. That’s right, many of these RoadRailers were properly long trains consisting of nothing but semi-trailers.
According to Trains Magazine and Triple Crown, a RoadRailer trailer starts off with a reinforced trailer frame. These beefy frames are designed to withstand 400,000-pound draft and buff in-train forces, way more force than they’d take being towed by a semi-tractor. They are further reinforced at the front and rear points where they attach at a coupler and at the rail bogie.
That rail bogie is another specialized piece of equipment. Triple Crown says the trailer is pulled onto a railroad track and its air suspension system lifts the trailer over the bogie. Then the trailer is reversed onto the bogie and latched up. After, the air suspension pulls the trailer’s wheels up so that it’s no longer touching the ground directly. The bogie carries additional rigging plus a braking system. The trailers have their own railroad brake pipe. In all, the empty weight of a RoadRailer trailer is 800 to 1,000 pounds heavier than a typical semi-trailer of equivalent size.
Trains Magazine notes that RoadRailer trains running between Detroit and St. Louis were often near or at the legal limit of 150 trailers. These trains were around 8,300 feet long but just carried just 4,000 tons of goods. A lot of it was car parts, but also other general goods that you’d ship in dry vans. A load of 4,000 tons isn’t a heavy lift for a locomotive, so Norfolk Southern pulled these trains with just a single six-axle locomotive.
There were other advantages to the RoadRailer system. The trailers weighed less than comparable rail options and they were only a foot apart from one another, making them surprisingly aerodynamic for rail traffic. The RoadRailers were also quite difficult to steal from since a foot of space isn’t really enough space to break into a trailer and make it out with goods.
Wabash National was the builder of the highly-specialized RoadRailer trailers and both the trailers and the bogies went through several generations over the decades.
As silly as all of this sounds, Triple Crown Services was seen as such an innovative thing that Amtrak, BNSF, Canadian National, CSX, and Union Pacific all tried their hands at the RoadRailer thing, as have railroads in other places as far as Australia and India. Unfortunately for the U.S. railroads, while it was popular, RoadRailer service was still a niche and Norfolk Southern’s Triple Crown was the king. So, Triple Crown continued to flourish when other attempts failed.
The End Of An Era
So, I bet you’re wondering what happened. If Triple Crown was so popular, why did the last RoadRailer train ever operate just this past Sunday?
According to Trains Magazine, it comes down to money. As you read above, the Triple Crown Services used highly specialized equipment and it only made sense for the niche of customers Norfolk Southern found for the service. As time rolled on, the RoadRailer equipment got old and as the equipment aged, the railroad determined that it would be too expensive to update the fleet. And since Norfolk Southern wasn’t going to fix the aging fleet the RoadRailers would no longer be able to reliably carry out their jobs. Trains can’t sit around waiting for repairs, so Norfolk Southern decided to scale back the Triple Crown operation.
First came the elimination of most RoadRailer routes. In 2015, the Triple Crown operation was scaled back from 13 terminals to just two, the lucrative Kansas City to Detroit auto parts route. Then came the announcement that the RoadRailers as we know them would be killed off on August 25. As if to prove Norfolk Southern’s point about reduced reliability, the final train was delayed by over four hours due to equipment breaking down. Still, railfans around the Midwest chased the train to get the last pictures of the last train of a strange concept.
In an interesting twist, Norfolk Southern says it’s not the end of Triple Crown or the RoadRailers. The company wants to expand the Triple Crown network again, but the trains won’t be hauling modified truck trailers but typical standardized intermodal containers, from Trains Magazine:
“With great appreciation for the historical role that RoadRailers played in expanding our network, Norfolk Southern is planning to retire the equipment and launch a new service product with more utility that will enable growth for our railroad and our customers,” spokeswoman Katie Byrd says. “We will shift Triple Crown business into its TCZU 53 foot container fleet, unlock capacity on existing trains, and pave the way to expand Crown services across North America.”
So, this is the end. For nearly 39 years, Norfolk Southern pulled trains around the eastern part of America that were really just truck trailers lashed together. It sounded silly, but it made sense as it blended trains and trucks into a single service. Now, the rails in the Midwest are going to get a little more boring.
After inflicting a standard intermodel container size on the world that makes no sense at all (12.192 metres long … the mind boggles), the US then turns around at makes a different size for domestic traffic? WHAT?
The other part of the equation is that railroads are upgrading their rights of way to accommodate double-stacked 53′ containers. Greater density delivers more efficiency, even if it means using intermodal terminals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-stack_rail_transport
Interestingly, TOFC (Trailer On Flat Car) dates from the 1800s. Farmers on Long Island would load their wagons with foodstuffs, and tow them by horse to the rail yard. The wagons were loaded onto flat cars, and delivered into New York City, where another horse would take the wagon to market.
I’m old enough to remember when these debuted — they were definitely hailed as “the future” of intermodal transportation. (Up to that point, TOFC/piggyback service was more or less the definition of intermodal service; container service wasn’t a thing yet; and shuffling lots of trailers on and off of flatcars was becoming an efficiency pain-point.)
This version of the RoadRailer concept is actually the second iteration. The prototype and initial production version was built by the Budd corporation, and used a single-axle set of rail wheels permanently attached at the rear of each trailer. The wheels were raised or lowered by air pressure, and latched up or down. The trailers’ reinforced frames had a retractable drawbar system to link them together and used a four-wheel rail wheelset with a fifth wheel atop to connect to the first trailer in the string, just as with the eventual widely-used version.
The original, with its single wheelset per trailer, offered even less rolling resistance, and therefore maximum fuel efficiency in a train. The problem with it was that the added weight of the rail wheels permanently attached to the trailer reduced its allowable loading weight on highways. Plus there was the added possibility of failures in the air lift/lowering mechanism potentially stranding the trailer on or off the rails and temporarily delaying close timetables for changeover and delivery. They ran great as a lightweight, tightly-coupled articulated trainset, though.
The much mechanically simpler system of bridging each trailer with a standard four-wheel freight truck adapted with a coupling system preserved most of the advantages of the prototype, just with a small compromise in total fuel efficiency on rails while preserving highway loading capacity (and therefore end-to-end payload) and keeping the rail wheelsets to more standard parts outside of the coupling equipment.
I’m pretty sure Budd originally coined the name “RoadRailer” for their system with the self-contained liftable wheels. But it quickly became genericized, like “xerox” and “kleenex”.
I’d never heard of this before. I wonder if there are any scale versions out there; this seems like a unique thing that modelers would embrace.
I’m pretty sure there are. But specialty models like this, and the continuously-connected single-car loading/unloadingGATX TankTrain with its unique flexible plumbing, tend to be made in more limited quantities and cataloged availability comes and goes.
Bowser Trains makes Roadrailer models
I live near an NS switching yard, and it wasn’t uncommon for these triple crown trailer trains to block every crossing for a few miles for hours on end. Needless to say, their presence in this community was incredibly aggravating to anyone driving in the area. At least now I know why they were often stopped like that for hours – it was the equipment maintenance.
While I love the notion about the efficiency of rail for freight over long distances, Norfolk Southern is just another really shitty megacorporation that really didn’t give a shit about the communities that it impacted.
I had seen these all over and they have slowly been replaced by the standard 20/40 containers.
The one question I always had still isn’t answered, and I was hoping Mercedes would point it out. Why was it called triple crown when it only ever traveled two ways? Shouldn’t it have been called double crown?
I’m pretty sure it had to do with just making a slick advertising connection with Norfolk Southern’s horse logo and “Thoroughbred Service” marketing. That, and like I mentioned in my main comment, “RoadRailer” was actually derived from Budd’s version of the technology that was then replaced with the simplified version from Wabash National and NS. While the public had already genericized the name, they needed to re-name it since it was Budd’s trademark.
I’m not quite half way through the book, “The Box, How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger” which is fascinating. I had no idea that containerizing has been going on for a really long time and the changeover radically changed ports. Interesting that there is no entry in the index for Triple Crown nor for RoadRailer. Since the book is looking at the book from a very large perspective, this regional practice probably not significant enough to be included. Thanks for this look at a different perspective on the box.
It seems odd that the extra structure in the trailers and the custom bogies makes this concept no longer financially viable. I’d think the extra crane structures or massive fork lifts and related manpower necessary for moving the intermodal containers would shift the balance in favor of the custom trailers, but then again I’m not a bean counter. Maybe all the train yards have the equipment for moving the intermodal containers anyway, and this process winds up requiring extra space at the yards.
Seems like it was a great concept, though.
I suspect one issue effecting financial viability was cost to replace them (which was mentioned)
Rail is much, much harder on equipment. Harder on the freight too. Road trailers are not made to withstand that abuse so I’m guessing the “cost” was in part because they needed replacing much sooner than normal trailers. And much, much sooner than containers. Rail is a tough environment.
Very interesting, I had not heard of these before. I remember seeing trailers piggybacked frequently back in the day before shipping containers became so common.
The thing I find surprising is that those parts plants and assembly facilities lacked rail doors. The non-profit I work for has a warehouse space in an area filled with warehouses and mfg facilities. There is a massive network of spurs off of the main line to those warehouses with proper rail doors. Of course with the rise of intermodal dropping off/picking up a box car or two here and there is just too expensive. The majority of the spurs are now out of service, including the one behind our facility which has some ~1′ diameter trees growing up between the ties.
20′ and 40′ containers do move domestically by train. My bonus son was a can smasher at an intermodal yard for a couple of years, and a lot of what he moved were 20’s and 40’s fresh off the boat. I also often see them when heading to and from that warehouse where I cross those main lines at grade and thus am stuck there watching the train go by.
Oh, containers make X-Country trips. I see them going by my house daily. A lifetime ago, I worked at a manufacturing plant that shipped products by rail. It involved having boxcars sitting on a siding for days at a time (demurrage costs) then loading the product through the side door with a fork lift making the right angle turn to place it in the end. When loaded and sealed, the rail company was called to collect the rail car and put it in a consist that would get it to the right yard to be unloaded and delivered to the customer.
A container is dropped off by a truck, loaded from the end (straight shot), sealed up and a truck called to take it to the customer or if long distance, a rail yard for delivery at another yard and local delivery truck.
I was specifically referring to the “International” 20’s and 40’s that the article claims don’t go by rail. Yes with containers it is easier and more importantly much cheaper to do the “last mile” by truck, but when these were put into service rail doors were very common on large warehouses and manufacturing facilities. In general cans are only used when the load is going to be intermodal, otherwise they just send a standard dry trailer.
Waiting on the Australians to explain road trains.
Road trains are semi-trailer/trucks with multiple trailers, that do not run on rails at all. The most common is a B Double, while not technically a road train, they consist of the prime mover and two trailers connected directly together, no dolly between them, one trailer being significantly shorter than the other. These are used everywhere around the cities, towns and country. Road Trains are restricted to more rural and outback roads, the most common is three trailers, usually all full size, 40ft, with dollies connecting all trailers behind the front one. I’m sure Laurence sees his fair share of road trains in his part of the country, I live near a capital city now, so only see them when on a trip.
This was a good show- Outback Truckers
https://youtube.com/@outback-truckers?si=-x3-npgeLrr2PFsT
I live on the line that just ended. They were good trains to see coming because they also had a priority deal on the rail. So when you see (saw 🙁 ) them coming you knew it wasn’t going to be long. Now it’s regular to see trains so long they are putting engines in the middle and the end. Love the train content!
Cool! I never knew about these. Too bad they found them too expensive.
When I was a kid in the 70’s I had a subscription to Model Railroader, and I remember when these came out it was a pretty big deal. They even had how-to articles on how to model the equipment (way past my talent level of course). I always wondered what happened to them as I never saw any in person, but I would never have believed they were still in use as of last week!
I knew all about intermodal, but this was rare for me to see. I did see it on two occasions…I was lucky enough to pass by some consists, and I had to pull over. Of course, this was before the time of cell phone camera ubiquity, so the filthy physical media is nowhere to be found, but I thought that there were bogies underneath each of the trailerx, similar to how railroad work trucks can drive and ride the rails. Good data, and great article! Trains are still the way, although I love cars. I wish there were more high speed routes, so I could do short and intermediate journeys in my car and long distance in train, but that’s a discussion for another day!
Got to pull a RoadRailer trailer when I worked for USPS, was impressed with how it pulled and handled just like a “normal” trailer with no compromises. My experience during that period when Amtrak used Roadrailers to move mail for the Postal Service also taught me why the Roadrailers failed- The Postal Service would send drivers to the Amtrak station right when the trains came in and then complain about traffic congestion at the depot, hang on to Amtrak’s RoadRailers assuming they’d just have to pay the detention charges that most intermodal equipment owners were happy to receive but Amtrak needed them back for the next train, or the time a RoadRailer trailer came in from Amtrak to St.Paul with paint cans bound for South Dakota on the back and the mail in the front…
This story is the best single-source point of information about Triple Crown Road Railers that I have ever read. Outstanding work!