Pacific Fruit Express, Part One
Delivering perishables across the nation
P
acific Fruit Express, or PFE, was in its day the largest
perishable transportation company in the world. It had
the largest fleet of refrigerator cars (nearly double its
nearest competitor), the largest ice plants, and the highest
rate of car utilization in North America. Its history is complex
and interesting, and I only address it briefly here, as back-
ground for modeling.
Many readers may know, there is a very complete book about
the company and its operations,
Pacific Fruit Express
(2nd edi-
tion), by A.W. Thompson, R.J. Church, and B.H. Jones, Signature
Press, 2000. I’ll refer to it as “the PFE book.” It's 472 pages,
with 744 photographs, complete rosters, and even color chips.
But it does not address modeling.
There are several aspects to modeling PFE, and the PFE book is
simply not organized with a modeling perspective. Information
about operations is spread throughout the book, which is why I
will summarize it here. The book contains considerable history
Getting Real column
by Tony Thompson
PFE: Operations of a nationwide system
Getting Real Column - 1
MRH-Sep 2013
