This argument while largely true had a caveat. A freight car on a long haul route would not be switched just once but potentially would be switched every one hundred miles or so at each divisional point.

William Z. Ripley, Railroads: Rates and Regulation (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1916), 101-103.

George H. Miller, Railroads and Granger Laws (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1971), 109.

"Proceedings of Convention of the General Ticket and Passenger Association", St. Louis, March 9, 1877, Records of the National General Ticket Agents Association (Chicago, J.M.W. Jones Stationary and Printing Company, 1878), 465.