The Refrigerated Rail Car
In the late 1850s the meatpacker Gustavus Swift tried an experiment. He removed the doors from several boxcars and loaded the cars with sides of freshly killed beef, for shipment to markets throughout the rest of New England. It being the dead of winter he reasoned that his beef would arrive at markets fresh. It worked, but relying on winter weather was impractical, for obvious reasons. A reliable means of shipping butchered beef was necessary as the nation continued to grow.
To the west in Kansas City and Chicago, meatpackers and railroad executives were also searching for a means to keep meat fresh while being transported from the packers to markets. Experiments packing the cars with ice surrounding the meat were disappointing, contact between the beef and the ice caused discoloration of the beef; what is now called freezer burn. Later efforts included insulating the cars and packing the roofs and side walls with ice. This was more promising, but ice required constant replenishment during the beef’s journey to eastern markets.
Swift hired an engineer named Andrew Chase to design a car which preserved the ice longer, kept the loaded beef from shifting, which had caused derailments in earlier experiments, and was ventilated to ensure even temperatures throughout the car. When the railroads refused to purchase cars of Chase’s design, or to haul them if owned by someone else (which would have reduced the railroad’s income) Swift contracted with a railroad which until then had received little income from cattle or beef. Soon he was shipping 3,000 dressed beeves to Boston a week.
It wasn’t long before the meatpackers In Chicago and other cities were following suit. The refrigerator cars made beef more readily available and affordable throughout the country wherever there was rail service. In turn, Americans developed a taste for beef. Up to that time, lamb and pork were the most commonly consumed meats, with game still a substantial portion of the American diet in rural areas.
The refrigerator cars were soon carrying other products to regions where they were not produced locally. Fruit grown in New England was shipped south, with southern peaches heading north. But it was beef which had the most immediate impact, and it became the centerpiece of the American diet, a position it held for many years due to the immensity of the herds in the west and southwest.