What is Piggy Back?

Back in my college days I took an elective class by the name of Economic History of the United States 1900-1980. Yup, that was an elective. Not pottery. Not basket weaving. Hey, at least it was better than my other elective, History of Labor Unions. Can you guess at my major? Anyway, I bring this up because in my history class I had to crank out a 20 page paper comparing the rise of trucking leading to the the decline of rail. I large portion of my paper was devoted to the early days of intermodal transport, commonly called piggy back service. If Youtube had been a bigger source of time sucking back in 2004 I would probably would have found this video and possibly even used it a source. Sadly it wasn’t and I had to use actually books and other papers. It was a miserable experience.

This video by Southern Pacific takes you through all stages of the piggy back system including construction of rail cars. It’s fascinating to watch all the various old time trucks while ogling how things were once done. Most drivers will complain out jacking their trailer legs up but I bet most didn’t have to spin a handle until they closed the lid on the top of their trailer. Nope, that’s not a mistype. Watch the video and learn. Follow the SP as the visit with various clients using this radical new system and how it benefits their business. You’ll be glad you did.

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3 Responses to What is Piggy Back?

  1. Andy R. says:

    20 pages?

    High School English class… We had to write a 7 -10 page report on something…

    I chose in the area of the state of the US’s transpiration networks…

    I handed in a 37 page report, and the teacher wouldnt look at it…

    My mother whom worked at a typesetting firm, (there is a job that has gone the way of the dinosaurs) and she was able to get it down to 12 pages…

    • Eric says:

      How about this, one of my religious classes required a 12 page paper. Despite my best I could only get to six or seven so I just left the rest of the pages blank and handed in the paper that way. The professor wrote a question mark on each page. I still passed.

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