Gustavus Swift has established himself as one…

Gustavus Swift has established himself as one of the dominant figures of "The Yards", and his distinctive delivery wagons have become familiar fixtures on Chicago's streets.

In 1878, his partnership with Hathaway had dissolved and Swift Bros and Company had been formed in partnership with younger brother Edwin.

A number of attempts had made during the mid-nineteeenth century to ship agricultural products via rail car.

As early as 1842, the Western Railroad of Massachusetts was reported in the June 15 edition of the Boston Traveler to be experimenting with innovative freight car designs capable of carrying all types of perishable goods without spoilage.

The first known refrigerated boxcar or "reefer" had entered service on the Northern Railroad (New York) (or NRNY, which became part of the Rutland Railroad) in June 1851.

This "icebox on wheels" was a limited success in that it was only able to function in cold weather.

That same year, the Ogdensburg and Lake Champlain Railroad (O&LC) began shipping butter to Boston in purpose-built freight cars, utilizing ice to cool the contents.

The first consignment of dressed beef to ever leave the Chicago stockyards had done so in 1857, and was carried in ordinary boxcars retrofitted with bins filled with ice.

Placing the meat directly against ice had resulted in discoloration and affected the taste, however, and therefore proved to be impractical.

During the same period Swift experimented by moving cut meat using a string of ten boxcars which ran with their doors removed, and made a few test shipments to New York during the winter months over the Grand Trunk Railway (GTR).

The method proved too limited to be practical.

Detroit's William Davis, who had patented a refrigerator car that employed metal racks to suspend the carcasses above a frozen mixture of ice and salt, had sold the design in 1868 to George H. Hammond, a Detroit meatpacker, who had built a set of cars to transport his products to Boston using ice from the Great Lakes for cooling.

The loads had the unfortunate tendency of swinging to one side when the car entered a curve at high speed, and the use of the units was discontinued after several derailments.

Finally, in 1878, Swift hired engineer Andrew Chase to design a ventilated car that is well-insulated, and positions the ice in a compartment at the top of the car, allowing the chilled air to flow naturally downward.

The meat is packed tightly at the bottom of the car to keep the center of gravity low and to prevent the cargo from shifting.

Chase's design proves to be a practical solution to providing temperature-controlled carriage of dressed meats, and allows Swift & Company to ship their products all over the United States, and even internationally, and in doing so radically alters the meat business.

Swift's attempts to sell this design to the major railroads are unanimously rebuffed as the companies fear that they would jeopardize their considerable investments in stock cars and animal pens if refrigerated meat transport gained wide acceptance.

In response, Swift finances the initial production run on his own, then—when the American roads refuse his business—he contracts with the GTR (a railroad that derives little income from transporting live cattle) to haul them into Michigan and then eastward through Canada.

In 1880, the Peninsular Car Company (subsequently purchased by ACF) had delivered to Swift the first of these units, and the Swift Refrigerator Line (SRL) had been created.

Within a year the Line’s roster has risen to nearly two hundred units, and Swift is transporting an average of three thousand carcasses a week to Boston.