Coils when did they become a thing?

C D Zimmerman,now ZTL, in Mifflintown PA used to haul them a lot.Kind of special flatbed trailers.They had side panels and special tarp method for hauling coils.They also hauled bricks.

 

Dunno about back east but I remember coils coming out of the Fontana area in the late 60s. Kaiser? They'd usually go to canneries in the northern part of the state. The lumber haulers would use them for a back haul but they were so cheap that most of the time we'd pick up cans or fencing or roofing instead.

 

Kaplan started 1934 and was not the first. This pic I think would be early 40's. Someplace is a picture of Ed Kaplan hauling steel with a horse and wagon. Used to be in the old terminal.


My family skidded logs with teams of mules till mid 30's when the switched to trucks. All the boys went into trucking. But I don't believe anyone hauled steel till after they came home from WWII. I have some pics of my grandfather on Hennis in the 50's.

 

Thanks for the push down the rabbit hole...

I'll let you do the poking around with Google, but basically the use of coils in manufacturing really took off around 1960 with 2nd generation hot strip mills. The first hot strip mills were developed in the 1920's, but they had much lower capacity and produced smaller rolls than the Gen2 mills. Prior to the 1960's coils were generally shipped in gondolas. Because of the lower coil production prior to 1960, much more finished product was produced by the mills rather than off-site as happens today.

The reason coils became the mainstay in manufacturing was due to the ease of handling & storage compared to flat sheets, and a more uniform quality of steel from the coil vs sheets.

Also remember that the 1960's were when the shift in freight from rail to trucking really started to take off with the development of the Interstate System.

Now... <pushes @LTL Bull down the rabbit hole with "hot strip mill" preloaded in Google >

 

It's is and was a interesting aspect of trucking. Those who live out of the area don't see it as much.

Grandfather used to tell great stories hauling out of Youngstown Sheet and Tube to Chicago 3 rounds a week in a gas job white. Those men worked for a living.