Railroad Cancels: Contintental Fruit Express

A few posts back there are images from a set of connected companies that include the Southern Iron Car Line. These stamps were canceled by firms that were not railroads per se but were companies that controled railroad cars available for hire.

Continental Fruit Express was a company that controlled refrigerator cars that were leased or hired to railroads for shipping fruit from California back to the midwest and eastern United States. When companies like Contintenal were started the railroads did not have large stocks of refrigerator cars. Meat packing companies like Armour did, and started to use some of their cars used for meat to hire out for hauling fruit. The Chicago meat packing company Swift had a refrigerator car line called the California Fruit Transportation Company. Armour's was the Continental Fruit Express.



1 Cent Documentary stamp cancelled by the meat packing company Armour.