Tank Car, Single Dome, UTLX 30K Ethanol

History: For years, railroads have hauled ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, as it is better known. Ethanol is mostly made from corn and is used as additive to oxygenate gasoline to reduce pollution. It has also been mixed 85 percent ethanol to 15 percent gasoline and used as an alternative to gasoline. Most of this usage was in the Midwest in states such as Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and Indiana where there are considerable crops of corn grown. In 2004, it was mandated that ethanol be used to replace MBTE as an additive to oxygenate all gasoline used in the state of California. Since California is not a corn producing state, the ethanol has to be shipped in from states that do have large corn crops and ethanol plants.

This ethanol traffic boomed in 2004 as several million gallons of ethanol is needed each week by refineries in the Los Angeles Harbor area alone and 800 million gallons is needed in the state each year. To meet growing market demand for new tank cars, UTLX Manufacturing, Inc. is expanding production capacity with a green-field manufacturing facility at Alexandria, Louisiana. UTLX 205400 is the first car in the initial production run from the new plant. The 30,000 gallon (shell full) car is sized to stage the greatest number of cars at a producer's loading rack and still meet the 263,000-pound gross rail load limit. The car's coupled length of 59'4? and its 119 3/16? I.D. tank provide shipping efficiency within AAR Plate C clearance requirements. The Funnel-Flow design facilitates complete bottom unloading.

Railroad/Company: Union Tank Car Company or UTLX (their best known reporting mark) is a railway equipment leasing company (and car maintenance / manufacturing) headquartered in metro Chicago, Illinois. As the name says, they specialise in tank cars, and covered hopper cars. As of September 2005, according to their site, they have about 80,000 cars in their fleet.

Union Tank Car Company was founded in 1866 by Captain Jacob J. Vandergrift, in response to the economic activities of John D. Rockefeller in the years leading up to his creation of Standard Oil. Vandergrift was involved in the conflicts in the oil regions of Western Pennsylvania in the 1860s?1870s. Eventually, Union Tank Car Company and Vandergrift's other holdings, which included pipeline and riverboat transport companies, merged with the company that later became Standard Oil. Rockefeller, once Captain Vandergrift's nemesis, made him Vice President of Standard Oil. The town of Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, built in 1895 by steel company president George G. McMurtry to house his workers, was named in Vandergrift's honor.

TransUnion was formed as a holding company in 1968 to hold Union Tank Car Company. TransUnion soon began began acquiring credit information and information management companies as a second major investment. The Marmon Group acquired TransUnion in 1981, spinning off the TransUnion name and the financial portion of the holding company to Madison Dearborn Partners in the 1990s.

Union Tank Car Company is still owned by Marmon, which in turn is now a 100% owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.