Pick a car type and commodity to see how many tons one railcar carries, whether the load hits the weight limit or the cube first, and how many truckloads it replaces. Built on representative specs for modern 263k and 286k GRL equipment.
5,200 ft³ · load limit 225,000 lb · GRL 286,000 lb · typically grain, ddgs, fertilizer, soda ash
This car carries
112.5 tons
225,000 lb · about 4.7 truckloads at 24 tons each
Planning figures from representative builder specs — the stenciled LD LMT on the specific car governs.
| Car type | Capacity | Load limit | Typical lading |
|---|---|---|---|
| Covered hopper, small cube (3,250 ft³) | 3,250 ft³ | 230,400 lb | Cement, fly ash, frac sand |
| Covered hopper, grain (5,200 ft³) | 5,200 ft³ | 225,000 lb | Grain, DDGS, fertilizer, soda ash |
| Covered hopper, plastics (6,260 ft³) | 6,260 ft³ | 220,300 lb | Plastic pellets and resins |
| Open-top hopper (4,000 ft³) | 4,000 ft³ | 220,000 lb | Aggregate, petcoke, sand, rock |
| Coal gondola, aluminum (4,911 ft³) | 4,911 ft³ | 244,330 lb | Coal unit-train service |
| Mill gondola, 52 ft (~2,400 ft³) | 2,400 ft³ | 220,000 lb | Scrap, steel, aggregates |
| Boxcar, 50 ft (5,200 ft³) | 5,200 ft³ | 200,000 lb | Paper, lumber, palletized goods |
| Tank car, DOT-117 (28,600 gal) | 28,600 gal | 194,000 lb | Crude oil, flammable liquids |
| Tank car, DOT-117 (30,600 gal) | 30,600 gal | 195,900 lb | Ethanol, diesel, jet fuel |
| Pressure tank car, LPG (33,700 gal) | 33,700 gal | 162,400 lb | Propane, butane |
| Acid tank car (15,200 gal) | 15,200 gal | 226,000 lb | Sulfuric acid |
Sources: Greenbrier and FreightCar America published spec sheets and Union Pacific's equipment guide. Individual cars vary — the stenciled LD LMT on the car governs.
lading = min(load limit, cubic capacity × density) · load limit = GRL − tare
Every load is bounded twice: the car's cubic capacity and its load limit. Dense commodities (cement, sand, scrap) hit the weight limit with space left over — load past it and the car gets set out at the first scale. Light commodities (wood chips, DDGS, some resins) fill the cube without reaching the limit, which is why plastics ride in 6,260 ft³ cars and cement in 3,250 ft³ cars. If you're working the other direction — from a stockpile or an order to railcars — the cubic yards to tons converter and bulk density chart get you to pounds per cubic foot.
Overloads are found at weigh-in-rail scales after the car is already moving: the railroad bad-orders the car, you pay to transfer product, and the shipment misses its window. The calculator shows the fill percentage where a dense commodity reaches the load limit — that number, not a full cube, is the loading target. Scale tickets at loadout are the cheap insurance; Rebulk captures them per car so the weight on the BOL is the weight on the rail.
Most modern bulk cars carry 100–115 tons. A 286,000 lb GRL grain hopper hauls about 112 tons of wheat; a coal gondola about 120 tons; a crude oil tank car about 97 tons. The binding constraint is either the car's load limit (weight) or its cubic capacity (volume), depending on the commodity's density.
Gross Rail Load: the maximum combined weight of car plus lading on the rail. The modern free-interchange standard is 286,000 lb (AAR S-286, cars built since 2003); older cars and LPG pressure cars run 263,000 lb. Load limit = GRL minus the car's empty (tare) weight, and it's stenciled on every car as LD LMT.
Railroads weigh cars in motion and bad-order overloads — the car is set out, and you pay to transfer the excess lading plus switching charges. Union Pacific, for example, allows only about 2,000 lb tolerance over a 286k car's limit. Load to the stenciled limit, never to the cube, for dense commodities.
Because cement is heavy: at ~94 lb/ft³, a 3,250 ft³ hopper hits its load limit at about 75% full. Builders size the cube to the commodity — small cars for cement and sand, 6,000+ ft³ cars for plastic pellets — so the car weighs out and cubes out at roughly the same point.
About four to five. A legal bulk truck at 80,000 lb gross carries 22–25 tons of payload, so a 110-ton railcar replaces roughly 4.5 truckloads. That ratio is the core of the transloading economics — rail the long haul, truck the last miles.
Rebulk tracks every car, capture weight per BOL and scale ticket, and keeps silo, tank, and pile inventory live — so overloads and shortages surface before the car leaves.
