Athearn - 30117 - Trailer, 40 Foot, Drop Sill - United Parcel Service - 86987

Specific Item Information: Rubber tires• Painted wheels• Fully-assembled and ready to use out of the box • Highly-detailed, injection-molded body• Painted and printed for realistic decoration • Officially Licensed UPS Product

Prototype History: United Parcel Service of America, Inc.,(AKA UPS), is an American global package delivery company headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia. It delivers more than 15 million packages a day to more than 6.1 million customers in more than 220 countries and territories around the world.

UPS commonly refers to its tractor-trailers as “feeders”. All company-owned trailers are painted gray. UPS trailers come in a variety of lengths. The shortest trailers (also known as “pups”) are 28’. There are three different types of feeders: Flatbed, Drop Frame, and Trailer-on-flatcar (TOFC); the latter are put onto railroad cars.

Road Name History: United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS) is one of the world's largest package delivery company and a provider of supply chain management solutions. The global logistics company is headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, which is part of the Greater Atlanta metropolitan area. UPS was founded in 1907.

Along with the central package delivery operation, the UPS brand name (in a fashion to that of competitor FedEx) is used to denote many of its divisions and subsidiaries, including its cargo airline (UPS Airlines), freight-based trucking operation (UPS Freight, formerly Overnite Transportation), and retail-based packing and shipping centers (The UPS Store). UPS is known for its brown delivery trucks and uniforms, hence the company nickname "Brown". UPS also operates its own airline and air cargo delivery service (IATA: 5X, ICAO: UPS, Call sign: UPS) based in Louisville, Kentucky.

Brand/Importer Information: Athearn's history began in 1938, when its founder-to-be, Irvin Athearn, started an elaborate O scale layout in his mother's house. After placing an ad selling the layout, and receiving much response to it, Irv decided that selling model railroads would be a good living. He sold train products out of his mother's house through most of the 1940s. After becoming a full-time retailer in 1946, Irv opened a separate facility in Hawthorne, California in 1948, and that same year he branched into HO scale models for the first time.

Athearn acquired the Globe Models product line and improved upon it, introducing a comprehensive array of locomotive, passenger and freight car models. Improvements included all-wheel drive and electrical contact. One innovation was the "Hi-Fi" drive mechanism, employing small rubber bands to transfer motion from the motor spindle to the axles. Another was the double-ended ring magnet motor, which permitted easy connection to all-wheel-drive assemblies. Athearn was also able to incorporate flywheels into double-ended drives.

The company produced a model of the Boston & Maine P4 class Pacific steam locomotive which incorporated a cast zinc alloy base and thermoplastic resin superstructure. It had a worm drive and all power pickup was through the bipolar trucks that carried the tender. This item was discontinued after the Wilson motor was no longer available, and was not redesigned for a more technologically advanced motor.

Athearn's car fleet included shorter-than-scale interpretations of passenger cars of Southern Pacific and Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad prototypes. The company also offered a variety of scale-length freight cars with sprung and equalized trucks. The cars could be obtained in simple kit form, or ready-to-run in windowed display boxes. The comprehensive scope of the product line contributed to the popularity of HO as a model railroad scale, due to the ready availability of items and their low cost.

Irv Athearn died in 1991. New owners took control in 1994, but continued to follow Athearn's commitment to high-quality products at reasonable prices. Athearn was bought in 2004 by Horizon Hobby. Athearn was then moved from its facility in Compton to a new facility in Carson, California. In mid-2009, all remaining US production was moved to China and warehousing moved to parent Horizon Hobby. Sales and product development was relocated to a smaller facility in Long Beach, California.

Read more on Wikipedia and Athearn website.