Maybe Jimmy G. has better knowledge than me??
Once upon a time I had all the terminals memorized. They were also assigned numbers. Like for instance, Indy was 233; York was 118; West Middlesex Pa was 125. I've forgotten almost all of them by now. There was a dividing line about the Pa/Ohio line that changed from 100 numbers to 200 numbers. I'm thinking Dayton was 225; Col 226?????
I remember the Alpha Code letters all ended in X. The pictures threw me for a loop-- the ones I remember all had the X on the end. (AKX; RIX; LIX was Long Island; INX was Indy; YOX was York,Pa; WMX was West Middlesex.)
Quick story about a foreman who came to Preston from Yellow shortly after we were bought:
We had become a short-haul LTL Carrier, to (looking back-- now it's obvious) work out the bugs in the Next Day System for Yellow. Basically, we were Gunia Pigs. Our best work was running skid loads so that we could move freight from Indy to York, Pa overnight!
Well, along came this new foreman (who I didn't know had been
fired at Yellow). He beamed, swelled up his chest, and announced "I'm gonna train you guys to load like Yellow!" My job in those days was to load off the dock. This foreman had a load all picked out. Going to York, Pa. A conveyor system; we had picked it up and it was critical hot freight. Obviously we didn't want to load it high/tight or hold it up in any way.......
This guy took me into the trailer and showed me that this conveyor had air space between the rollers; between the parts, etc,etc. Out in the aisle to be loaded we had 15 different skids (all different 1 skid bills)of Rit Dye-- 4" x 4" x 4" square boxes-- all with barely legible stenciled names on each box. All going to the same consignee, but different store addresses in various towns thru the York Hub. This foreman had me break down each skid (15 skids times about 157 cartons per skid and strategically place them as top freight/bottom freight-- all thru the conveyor-- in the rollers-- in the control box area-- everywhere-- probably more than 1500 loose cartons to be matched up)-- in addition to probably about 20 bills of skids. And probably about 8 more bills of real top freight. Took me a full eight hours to load, and I wasn't matching anything. EVERY square inch was maxed to capacity-- for sure! Not a single inch of space did not have a Rit Box to fill it!
The Foreman was quite proud.
Probably took them at least a week to break the load and match it up in York........
I wonder how the conveyor turned out?