It looks like a Reefer…but is it?

If you call it a reefer, I don’t see anyone correcting you. Are you right? Well, not exactly. A true refrigerated boxcar (reefer), has a mechanical unit located on either end of the car that uses diesel fuel to emit a charged coolant into the boxcar. When loaded, you’ll hear the unit humming and usually see some sort of small function lights, typically red. So what about the reefers without exterior refrigeration units? Are they on the inside? Carrying ice like the old days? Cooled by Starlink? Sorry, no.

Not everything that needs to stay cool needs to be refrigerated. For items like beverages (beer for example), canned goods, paper products, etc, only need the help of thermal insulation to keep them from ruin. This is done with insulation panels, a specialized exterior coating that reflects heat, well sealed doors, and GPS monitoring to ensure the range of temperature is met.

“Ok, so what about Cryo-Trans? Cryogenic is sort of in the name.” It sure is…but thats about it.

In the 1980’s, the railroad lacked sufficient refrigeration services in their fleets of reefers to travel from coast to coast with frozen items. With this gap in shipping, Cryo-Trans was born. In the beginning they introduced the use of CO2 to keep frozen foods and items like vaccines and other pharmaceuticals at safe temperatures during transport. But as the years wore on, the cost of CO2 skyrocketed and the belief it was an unsafe way to keep these items cold forced the elimination of CO2 and Cryo-Trans begun thus converting their railcars into true Reefers with mechanical refrigeration units. As more years passed, many cars were converted/added to the fleet as simply insulated boxcars, with no cooling assistance whatsoever.

Simply put, no, an insulated boxcar is technically not a reefer, but if your heart desires to call it one, again, no one should correct you.

Now you know…