Originally, cars didn’t have it so good.
They went in boxcars.
They went on flatcars, stacked one on top of the other.
Trains were important in making cars, too, and auto-parts special trains with nicknames like the *Sparkplug* began to appear.
It didn’t take long to realize that something better had to come along to move cars by rail, and when it did, it was spectacular: The tri-level auto rack.
Three levels of brand-new car heaven.
There were some interesting detours.
Some folks thought they could pack in even more wheels on wheel.
Witness, the Vert-A-Pac, a giant 89-foot car that in the 1970s could swallow 30 Chevy Vegas instead of the standard 18.
Just one problem: the cars rode standing on their noses!
Fortunately, the big three auto makers, Ford, Chrysler, and General Motors and the railcar manufacturers refined the tri-level, putting an enclosure around the precious cargo.
Despite declines in the 1970s and during the Great Recession of the 2000s, auto traffic on rail is up like never before.
The end goal is to get the right vehicles to the right dealers quickly and economically, like these Volkswagen Passats at Chattanooga.
Some vehicles are destined to dealers within a few hundred miles of where they are produced or imported.
For these cars, a semi-truck move works fine.
The rest are driven onto multilevel auto rack cars—trilevels for autos and bilevels for pickups, minivans and sport utility vehicles.
Trilevels can hold about 15 cars while bi-levels can haul eight or ten bigger vehicles and are limited to 55 miles per hour to limit damage to cars in transit.
Ten to 15 cars may seem small, but consider this, any of these autorack freight cars could easily hold more than a million tennis balls and have room to spare.
The biggest autoracks can hold up to 22 autos each and can ride at maximum freight speeds of 70 miles per hour.
Today, automakers produce most of North America’s vehicles in industrial cores extending from Ontario through Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Ohio in the North; and from Georgia to Texas, and on through Mexico in the South.
Railroads move finished automobiles from assembly plants in these regions to about 150 auto terminals, where autos get sorted and loaded onto trucks for delivery to area dealers.
Manufacturers also have to supply their assembly plants with parts made elsewhere, from engines and transmissions to body stampings to seats and dashboards.
Railroads once dominated auto parts transportation too, particularly when the supply chains for far-flung assembly plants reached back to U.S. Midwestern factories.
Now many of the parts originate in Mexico and are assembled in the north
