Empire Transportation Company

The Empire Transportation Company was a multimodal freight transportation company founded and operated by Joseph D. Potts in 1865. It owned a small fleet of boats on the Great Lakes which collected grain and produce which were then delivered to Erie, Pennsylvania. It owned 5,000 railroad cars, 1,500 of which were tank cars devoted to carrying oil. It also owned 520 miles of oil pipelines. By the mid-1870s, it hauled about 3,000,000 barrels of oil annually, of which about two-thirds came from independent oil refiners. The company was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad and it was very profitable. In 1876 the company paid a 10 percent dividend ($400,000) on stock worth $4,000,000.