A BANNER YEAR IN THE TRANSPORTATION OF OIL, 1865

Two major events in the transportation of oil and refined products occurred in the United States in 1865: the advent of the pipeline and the introduction of the railway tank car. Both of these inventions, having undergone successful try-outs, enabled the oil industry to economically distribute crude oil from wilderness fields to centers of refining and commerce.

The first successful long distance pipeline (about five miles) was the Van Syckel two-inch line laid during 1865 in difficult terrain from the new Pithole field westward to a RR terminal at Miller Farm on the west bank of Oil Creek, Pennsylvania. Using three Reed and Cogswell steam pumps this line began to pump oil on October 10, 1865, at the rate of approximately 2000 barrels per day. A fourth pump brought the delivery of oil up to 2500 barrels daily. This event was a transportation and economic miracle. Drillers were enabled to explore for oil in distant, even seemingly inaccessible places knowing that a pipeline could find its way to the strike and enable the new oilfield to develop.

In 1865 the railroads saw the first tank car. It consisted of two 40 barrel wooden tanks mounted over the trucks on a flat bed. Invented by the Densmore Brothers, oil buyers at Miller Farm, the wooden tank cars proliferated. Much of the oil that they carried to the seaboard had started its journey in the Van Syckel pipeline.

The year 1865 saw the 42 gallon oil barrel start to become a unit of bulk measurement instead of a wooden container.