Truck, Intermodal, Piggy-Packer

History: By the early 1960s, railroads in North America were routinely transporting truck trailers on specialized railroad cars called “piggyback” flat cars (known as Trailer On Flat Car, or TOFC). The loading and unloading of truck trailers from these flat cars was accomplished by way of a ramp at one end of the train, with a truck-tractor used to pull the trailer on and off the train. This was commonly referred to as “circus loading”, and was a time consuming process: by this method, trailers on piggyback flat cars could only be loaded or unloaded sequentially. Furthermore circus loading required a very skilled driver, one able to navigate the narrow confines of a flatcar, especially when backing up to pick up a trailer.

In 1968, the FWD Wagner Corp. developed the P-80 and the PC-90. The boom on the PC-90 (and P-80) was redesigned to eliminate the tilting of the trailers during lifting by including a pair of horizontal stabilizing bars that served as a parallelogram. Folding grapple arms replaced the clamshell lift mechanism, eliminating the 10-feet clearance required with the '70. Further, by 1968, ISO standards had been established for the emerging maritime container business, replacing the proprietary lift mechanisms for SeaLand, Matson and others. Nelson saw the growth potential in adapting the Piggy-Packer for container handling, and chose the lift mechanism that had been developed by Ropco Corp. The first dual-purpose machine equipped with a container spreader entered service in UP’s Seattle facility in 1968. Furthermore, lift capacity was beefed up to 90,000 lb (45 tons). The PC-90 quickly became the de facto standard for mechanization of TOFC operations.

Railroad/Company: Wagner products range from 2WD and 4WD Logstackers, Chip Dozers, Coal Dozers, Steel Slab Handlers, Steel Coil Handlers and Heavy Lift Transporters. Allied Systems is not only the OEM, but also provides used, rebuilt, remanufactured and rental machines. The flagship Logstackers range in capacity from 60,000 lb to 160,000 lb capacity for short wood to tree length logs. The unique design of the Chip Dozers allows it to push as much load in front of the bucket as it is carrying inside of it for maximum productivity of up to 100 cubic yards per pass. Decades of success prove that the Wagner products are the highest performing, most productive, safest and longest lasting material handling machines in the industry. Wagner is able to provide the best products while maintaining the lowest total cost of ownership by providing equipment that is purpose built for each application.