Where Are the Cars?

As Texas farmers began threshing the greatest winter wheat crop in U.S. history this week, the news for the world's hungry was good. Best estimates place the crop at 1.3 billion bushels, more than double any average prewar year. But the chances of starting the wheat on its way promptly are worse than ever. Fewer boxcars are available than in the worst war years. In the Texas Panhandle, farmers are already scouting around for circus tents to cover the grain on the ground until the railroads can move it. As the harvesters move north in the next month, the car shortage will become worse.

The Association of American Railroads ordered Eastern and Western lines to deliver 1,600 cars a day to wheat-belt roads. That is well over the 1,200-a-day quota for last year, when wheat rotted on the ground. But there is no guarantee that the roads will get the 1,600, as all are short of cars. Car production is still low. Manufacturers delivered an estimated 4,000 new freight cars last month, about half of them boxcars. But every month the railroads, run flat-wheeled during the war, have been forced to retire more than 5,000 worn-out cars. Production of enough cars to alleviate the shortage--10,000 a month--will probably not be reached until September. ODT Director J. Monroe Johnson, who had blamed the carmakers' low production on lack of steel last winter (TIME, Feb. 24) now blames the car-builders. (The car-builders still blame the steel shortage.) All the wheat farmers can do is hope for dry weather. If they are lucky not too much wheat will rot in the fields.

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