Most big corporations own & operate the little switching locomotives that scuttle around within the boundaries of their plants. The railroads merely deliver and collect freight cars at the company gates. That practice eliminates the annoyance of having outside locomotives chugging about the works at odd hours, allows manufacturers to enforce their own rules against fire hazards, minimizes the opportunities for industrial espionage.
For a long time, however, a few big companies have bulldozed the carriers into paying them for operating their own equipment, arguing that freight rates were supposed to cover such switching and "spotting" service. And from 1927 to 1931...
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