the.com/freight car
A steel box that gets your stuff everywhere except on time.
means A railway wagon built to haul cargo rather than passengers.
from A straightforward compound: 'freight' (goods carried for payment, from Middle Dutch/Low German 'vracht,' meaning the cost of transporting cargo on a ship) plus 'car,' the old word for a wheeled vehicle, which in American railway usage became the standard term for any rail carriage — passenger car, boxcar, freight car. The word traveled from shipping docks to rail yards as goods-hauling by rail boomed in the 1800s, carrying its maritime cargo sense along with it.
- capacity
- can haul up to 286,000 pounds loaded
- lifespan
- often runs 40-plus years before retirement
- speed myth
- average US freight train crawls under 25 mph
- hobo history
- once the default ride of Depression-era wanderers