Railroaders' Nostalgia > Mad Dog Chronicles #83: Autos and Auto Parts

Oakland Terminal 1974: Autos and Auto Parts.

A second major change in the Oakland Terminal today when compared with 1974 is the complete absence of auto loading/unloading facilities. This coupled with the closure of all six of the auto and truck plants which were located on the Western Division in 1974 have led to major changes in the traffic flows seen in and around Oakland by 1982. (Of course the Numi plant reopened at Warm Springs and autos are still loaded and unloaded at Benicia and Milpitas, but that is a different story.

In 1974 there were three separate, large auto unloading operations at West Oakland. These three facilities were located to the south and west of the PMT loading dock and the piggy back ramps. Although there were already packer tracks there were also still piggyback ramps, which were, located right next to middle Harbor road right before it curves to the north.

The auto ramps were run by Kenosha (northern most), PMT (middle) and Commercial Carriers (the southern most ramp facility). These ramps were pulled on the afternoon shift and spotted on the midnight shift. In addition there was a lot of switching involved for both loaded auto racks as well as the empty racks. At the peak of these operations this probably could account for at least five or six yard engine assignments right at West Oakland and the Desert.

Why so much switching? First, there were more than just one or two types of vehicles arriving for each of the auto ramps. The ramp managers required that cars be custom switched. Most obviously, all of the vehicles in a string of cars must be pointed in the same way, so since there were five or six tracks in each facility there would be tracks with cars pointed north and tracks with cars pointed south. Less obvious but also easy to understand, you must separate bi-level rack cars from tri-level racks. But there is even a third requirement. All of the managers wanted, actually demanded, that we line up what are called low deck cars in separate strings from the high deck cars.

Ok, now why switch out the empties? Simple, because the car distributors sent them to different destinations. Where they went depended on the requirements from the various loading points. They might send the same type of car to Warm Springs today, to LA tomorrow and east to Detroit the next day. Like I said, lots of switching.

Auto parts were a different story. Loaded trains for Warm Springs and Milpitas generally came in solid trains and by-passed Oakland when headed to the plants. They also by-passed Roseville. The empties also were set up to by-pass Roseville headed east. This meant that these cars need what was then a 500 mile inspection. (Today this is now a 1500 mile inspection.) The empty auto parts trains would return from Warm Springs and be yarded on Desert tracks one and two. They might also be shoved into the western extensions of tracks one and two. By using the extensions, we could build full sized trains. When the extension and the main portion of track one or two were doubled together, we could depart a seven thousand foot train with out a need to double over in the Sixteenth Street Interlocking plant. That was a big help in expediting the empty auto parts trains that were given almost as high a priority as the loaded trains.

As you might well imagine, since we were making a thorough mechanical inspection of these cars there were always a few bad order cars which needed to be shaken out of every empty train. More switching, first dig the bad order car out, next take these cars to the rip tracks. Later when the repaired cars were released, bring them back to the Desert and add them to the next empty auto parts train. For most of 1974 and 1975 we were running two empty auto parts trains east at least five days a week, every week except when the plants shut down for Holidays or for retooling.

In 1974 there were also two auto parts plants right there in East Oakland. These were old plants that had been redeployed after GM had built the Warm Springs plant. These plants were now largely being operated as parts distribution warehouses. Cars for these plants which were accessed via the old Stonehurst branch at 105th avenue were still considered to be hot. I vividly remember one night when Chuck Otwell, who was known as “god” by the other yardmasters, explained this to me when I questioned him about lining up a hot car move for just two cars.

Besides all of this, there was a Caterpillar tractor plant at San Leandro, and two truck plants served out of Mulford.

Autos and auto parts were providing more than 35% of the revenue from the operations of the Western Division up until 1982.

mdo
11/6/04

It might surprise some fans to be told that the Bay Area, and the east Bay is particular, was an industrial powerhouse, but is was. Everything I've read on the subject suggests things really started to change as a direct result of the oil price "shocks" of 1973 and 1974, which then caused the unexpectedly deep recession from Nov. 1974 to Oct. 1975. Of course then the "domino effect" occured: as each plant or industrial facility closed SP suffered as a result. Only PennCentral/Conrail suffered more from the effects of the so called "industrial decline" in the country.

I'd like to hear Rob Leachman's thoughts on this subject. Rob, you out there?

AM

bradleymckay Wrote:
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> Everything
> I've read on the subject suggests things really
> started to change as a direct result of the oil
> price "shocks" of 1973 and 1974.
> AM

I seem to remember things starting to collapse before that.

mdo Wrote:
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> Oakland Terminal 1974: Autos and Auto Parts.
>

MDO, very nice summaries of both the canned goods and auto parts traffic. By the way, on the canned goods topic, wasn't there a dog food plant (Cal-Can?) that generated a lot of EB loads in the Oakland terminal area (or maybe this is included in the count of the canneries you provided)?

One correction on the auto parts:

For most of 1974 and 1975 we were
> running two empty auto parts trains east at least
> five days a week, every week except when the
> plants shut down for Holidays or for retooling.

The Ford contract alternated every 90 days between SP and WP. While WP had the Ford business, I think one OVEXA per day on the SP was more common. Consistent with your description, during the 50% of the year that SP had both the GM and Ford contracts, 2 OVEXAs per day were typically required.

>
> Autos and auto parts were providing more than 35%
> of the revenue from the operations of the Western
> Division up until 1982.
>

And an even higher share of SP's profits. Given the way the rates were and given the union contracts, SP in the 60s and 70s made practically all of its profits from autos/auto parts and forest products. That was OK for a while, but it is dangerous to rely on so narrow a portfolio of customers. Indeed, when these businesses subsided (first - the forest products companies finished cutting down all the trees to be had cheaply in the PNW and then they packed up and moved to the SE US, and second - the US automakers lost a huge amount of market share to the Japanese makers), it was game over for SP.

I am oversimplifying somewhat, but I submit that the gist of my submission is really the case.


Best regards,

Rob L.

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It might surprise some fans to be told that the
> Bay Area, and the east Bay is particular, was an
> industrial powerhouse, but it was. Everything
> I've read on the subject suggests things really
> started to change as a direct result of the oil
> price "shocks" of 1973 and 1974, which then
> caused the unexpectedly deep recession from Nov.
> 1974 to Oct. 1975. Of course then the "domino
> effect" occured: as each plant or industrial
> facility closed SP suffered as a result. Only
> PennCentral/Conrail suffered more from the effects
> of the so called "industrial decline" in the
> country.
>
> I'd like to hear Rob Leachman's thoughts on this
> subject. Rob, you out there?
>
> AM

I'm here, Alan.

MDO and you are of course correct, there was a lot of industry generating a lot of rail operations in the Bay Area until the 70s. In addition to all the neat stuff MDO described in the East Bay, I can remember when South San Francisco ("The Industrial City") had a cold rolling steel mill, two large meat packing plants, several large machinery and equipment factories, etc.

A lot of US manufacturing industry died in the 70s as you say, but I don't think this applies as much to SP serving California as it does to the Eastern Roads serving what we now refer to as the Rust Belt.

If we leave out auto parts for the moment, most of the Bay Area industry was related to processing agricultural goods, e.g., canneries. Raw fruits and vegetables were trucked into the Bay Area from the Central Valley. (Remember when the freeways in Oakland were full of tomato trucks instead of full of container trucks?) I suppose it located here to begin with because of access to the labor pool, a big local market and access to good transportation services. This industry did not die, it simply packed up and moved out to the Central Valley when the Bay Area got too expensive for it. With the influx of migrants and immigrants from Mexico, labor in the Central Valley became plentiful and cheap. Land was less, taxes were less, road congestion was less. New more efficient facilities with lower labor costs could be built to replace outdated facilties inside the Bay Area where the canners couldn't afford to buy property for a new plant and you had to pay labor a lot more than before.

The huge double stack trains of canned goods running out of Stockton and Lathrop nowadays are the successor to the boxcar trains out of Oakland in SP's day. (And there still is a fair amount of boxcar canned goods out of the Central Valley.) So this traffic didn't die because of oil shocks or anything like that, it simply relocated out of the expensive urban zone.

As I posted above, the autos and auto parts case is different. The US auto manufacturers lost market share to the Asian producers (and are still losing share), so a lot of that traffic died. As their market share dropped, they closed up the assembly plants on the East and West Coasts and retrenched to plants in the middle of the US. The Ford plant in Milpitas was closed, the GM plant in Warm Springs survived only by becoming a joint facility with Toyota, primarily manufacturing vehicles for the California market (read little rail traffic). There was some substitution of set-up autos traffic for parts traffic, but I think overall domestic auto traffic to/from Calif. dropped sharply in the late 70s and through the 80s, and that hurt the SP a lot. As the Calif. population has grown, the setup auto traffic from middle-of-the-US plants (both domestic and transplant Japanese) has grown, so the WB setup auto traffic to the current ramp in Milpitas is probably pretty strong. There is some reverse traffic of setups from the NUMMI plant loaded at Milpitas as well.

To this day, there still is distribution of auto spare parts, of course, but I believe the warehouses for that have moved out of the Bay Area and into the Central Valley for the same reasons the canneries left.

Toyotas and the like were primarily imported through the PNW. Imports through Benecia and Southern California were small potatoes in comparison, so EB movement from Calif. of Asian autos, while nice traffic, never made up for the loss of domestic auto traffic.

With the exception of package express and LTL intermodal traffic, the Bay Area has moved far too upscale to generate much industrial rail traffic. A good contrast between old Bay Area and new Bay Area is in South San Francisco: Where it used to be steel mills and packing plants, now it is biotech fermentation and purification suites. Another good contrast: Emeryville, transformed from Ryerson Steel, Sherwin Williams paint and the like into Chiron biotech manufacturing, Pixar Animation Studios, and Sybase Software.

The dollar value of what is produced drastically exceeds what was produced before, and Bay Area folks are a much wealthier people as a result, but the role for rail that was once there is gone.

Which makes MDO's memoirs all the more valuable.

Best regards,

Rob L.

rob_l Wrote:
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> wasn't there a dog food plant
> (Cal-Can?) that generated a lot of EB loads in the
> Oakland terminal area

I don't recall it, offhand, butI'll ask around.

There was (maybe still is) a company called Sturdy Dog in the East San Leandro area that manufactured dog chow. It was a rather small operation, with a one-car spur off the Decoto Line near Mile Post 16. They received inbound covered hoppers, but shipped outbound products by truck.

Niles Subdivision, Topper, Niles Sub. Not the Decoto Line for goodness sake. You could, of course refer to it as the 20 zone.

I thought you would add something about "god", too.

mdo

mdo Wrote:
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> Niles Subdivision, Topper, Niles Sub. Not the
> Decoto line for goodness sake.

If you weren't such a young whippersnapper, you'd remember it as the Decoto Line, sonny!

> You could, of
> course refer to it as the 20 zone.

Ha! It was the 26 Zone! The 20 Zone was in the High Street area. As Donald Trump sez, "Yer fired!"

Mea Culpa, mea culpa.

mdo Wrote:
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> Mea Culpa, mea culpa.

UP's hiring.

The deck height was very important indeed. I once clerked at a ramp where Ford loaded vans. You can imagine what happened when high and low deck cars were mixed on the same ramp track. It could be done, but the low decks always had to be last out at the end of the track, not next to the ramp. Otherwise, scraaaaapppppe! Very important for the clerk who walked the ramp tracks after the empty cars were spotted to report accurately to the Ford supervisor the order of the cars.

Speaking of auto racks, I recall an enclosed tri-level fully loaded with Fords, overturned onto its side in the West Oakland Yard, around 1983(?) due to a switching accident. Those Fords were so tighly chained to the railcar that they still did not make contact with the side of the car. Wonder if they still went to market...

rob_l Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> By the way, on the canned
> goods topic, wasn't there a dog food plant
> (Cal-Can?) that generated a lot of EB loads in the
> Oakland terminal area

I put the question to one of the best sources of the history of SP's Oakland Terminal starting in the mid-1960s. He tells me there was indeed a dog food manufacturing plant along the Oakland Embarcadero. Here's part of his reply:

"Rich...there was a Cal-Can or Calo plant (can't remember which) on Embarcadero just west of 22nd Ave. Used to take about four or five cars a night, a couple times a week."

I vividly recall the abandoned warehouse which was on the site of what's now the Executive Inn. MDO will likely remember the building, as well. I don't remember the SPINS number, but it would've been in the 10 Zone.

Here's the SPINS for Zone 10, these must have been done after the company closed.

http://www.railsaroundthebay.net/more/structures/streettrack/spins/westerndivision/oaklandtosanleandro/zone10copy.html

http://www.railsaroundthebay.net/more/structures/streettrack/spins/westerndivision/oaklandtosanleandro/zone102copy.html

http://www.railsaroundthebay.net/more/structures/streettrack/spins/westerndivision/oaklandtosanleandro/zone103copy.html

To see the entire SPINS book for Oakland to San Leandro, check out this link.

http://www.railsaroundthebay.net/more/structures/streettrack/spins/westerndivision/oaklandtosanleandro/oaklandtosanleandro.html



topper Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> I vividly recall the abandoned warehouse which was
> on the site of what's now the Executive Inn. MDO
> will likely remember the building, as well. I
> don't remember the SPINS number, but it would've
> been in the 10 Zone.
>
>

fjc Wrote:
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> Here's the SPINS for Zone 10, these must have been
> done after the company closed.

Maybe.

I'll check around and see what the consensus is.

By the way, have now determined the company was called Calo Animal Foods, not Cal-Can (see below).


From the book, "Oakland, the story of a city", by Beth Bagwell;
"In 1928, the Port of Oakland became an official port of entry to the United States. This meant thet the papers for foreign cargo and ships under foreign registry no longer had to be handled by customs officials at the port of San Francisco, but could be processed directly in Oakland. The change opened the way for an expansion of foreign trade.
During the 1920's, Mayor Davie and the chamber of commerce worked hard to bring in new plants and industries. Oakland became the "Detroit of the west" as automobile manf. established assembly plants in the city. One of these was the Durant Motor Co., a G.M. subsidiary, which put out a model called the Oakland. Chevrolet,Willys, Fageol (buses and trucks), and Caterpillar tractor also opened plants in the east bay, while other automobile related companies manufactured diesel engines, batteries, valves, tires, upholstery, glass and other parts. Other major national manufacturers that came to Alameda county in the Davie years were Albers Mills, Calo Animal Foods, Shredded Wheat, Leslie and Morton salt, Heins 57 varieties, both Dutch Boy and Sherwin Williams paint, Western Electric and General Electric.
These were in addition to the canneries, cotton mills, the Phoenix Iron works(1901), and othe plants established earlier that continued in business in Oakland. As the hub of the West's transportation network, at the connecting point between rail, truck, and ocean shipping.
in 1926, according to a brochure published by the Alameda Board of Supervisors, "Industrial establishments in Alameda County number 1500; manufactured products exceed $475,000,000 in value each year; industrial workers number 62,000; 130 manufacturers known the nation over have plants here""

Calo was indeed located at what's shown as Track 1046. (See below)

Rich,
The spins book number would have been track #1046, shown as Domasco, which I think is short for Donut makers supply company, they moved in when Calo moved out, same sort of operation instead of putting bins of feed together for dog food, Domasco put different flour/wheat together for the donut industry. "....think...Babs doughnuts..."

I was kind of young during WW II and besides riding the Key Train one of the few other things I remember is the very large Sherwin Williams red neon sign at night with the red paint pouring out over the "world". Still think it was cool!
Roger Beckett

up833 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was kind of young during WW II and besides
> riding the Key Train one of the few other things I
> remember is the very large Sherwin Williams red
> neon sign at night with the red paint pouring out
> over the "world". Still think it was cool!
> Roger Beckett

My ol' man was a sign painter for Foster & Kleiser in the late forties and painted that sign once or twice...

up833 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was kind of young during WW II and besides
> riding the Key Train one of the few other things I
> remember is the very large Sherwin Williams red
> neon sign at night with the red paint pouring out
> over the "world". Still think it was cool!
> Roger Beckett

My ol' man was a sign painter for Foster & Kleiser in the late forties and painted that sign once or twice...