KarTrak the First Barcodes in Commercial Use

When thinking of the first barcodes, it’s easy to go straight to the first scan of a UPC barcode in a Marsh supermarket in Troy, Ohio on June 26th 1974.

For sure, this was an important event in the history of barcodes, something that evolved into the barcodes on just about every item we purchase, and on all the packages that are delivered to us.

But June 26th 1974 wasn’t the first time barcodes were used in a commercial application.

The Development of KarTrak

In the middle of the 20th Century, American railroads were grappling with the problem of keeping track of their railcars.

There were thousands of these in use and they could end up anywhere in the country – often on other railroads networks. To compound the problem, there were also thousands of cars owned by private companies.

To find a particular asset was huge problem and often meant railroad staff had to walk around large railyards noting which cars were actually onsite.

In 1959, an engineer at Sylvania, David Collins, came up with the concept of attaching a unique barcode plate to each railcar that could be read by scanners located at strategic points beside the railroad tracks.

The concept was developed during the 1960s and was introduced to some of the smaller railroads during that time period.

The system was named KarTrak ACI (Auttomatic Car Identification) and was promoted to the larger railroad industry.

Successful Rollout

Development of KarTrak progressed so that in 1967, the Association of American Railroads (AAR), the industry governing body, mandated that its members install KarTrak ACI barcode plates on all their railcars.

By 1970, it was estimated that about 80% of the inventory of 2 million railcars had the new barcode plates installed, and there were about 50 scanners in use.

The system wasn’t perfect, of course. Apparently, the successful read-rate of the barcode plates was about 80%, with damaged or dirty plates being one of the causes for read failures.

The End of KarTrak

It was recognized that to improve the read-rate of the barcode plates, they would need to be cleaned and replaced periodically, to keep them in good shape.

Because the railroad cars usually only visited the maintenance shop every two years, or so, a lot of the -plates received tlc only rarely and read-rates didn’t really improve. Also, while the scanners were supposed to be capable of reading the barcodes on trains traveling at up to 60 MPH, the actual read speed was often lower.

KarTrak had not developed an integrated data network for tracking the scans across railroads, which was also a hindrance.

As a result of the problems in 1977, the AAR member railroads voted to remove the mandate to use KarTrak.

This YouTube video on the history of KarTrak is worth a few minutes of your time, if you want to learn more:

How are Railcars Tracked Today?

In the years since KarTrak, improvements in technology have made it easier to keep track of railcards across the rail network.

Active RFID tags and trackside readers allowed cars to be quickly identified, even at high speeds and in bad weather that could obscure barcode plates.

Also, the development of GPS-enabled tags means that a particular asset can be tracked and located anywhere in real-time.

KarTrak retains its title of the first commercial barcode system, though.

I’ve heard that there are still railcars on the railroads that might have KarTrak barcode plates on them (even though there is an enforced 40 or 50-year lifecycle for rolling stock). When we lived in Fort Worth, TX, I walked by dozens of freight trains every day, but never caught a glimpse of one.