In 1991, Chrysler decided to take over switching dutites for the Jefferson North and Warren assembly plants from Conrail. Conrail would bring in the loads for the plants and the crews for Chrysler would start switching out around the plants. Then would build the trains of empties and outbound loaded autoracks for Conrail to take away. They purchased 3 U18Bs from CSX in the early 90s, as exampled by the paint schemes worn by CRTX 1991. The first paint scheme is from the first few years of operation. In 1998, when Daimler-Benz took over Chrysler, the U18s were painted and lettered to match the new trailers and trucks operated by the automaker. In 2008 when Chrysler declared bankrupsy and was spun off from Daimler, the lettering was patched over, similar to the trailers that are still running around the highways of Michigan.
In 2009, one of the U18s snapped a crankshaft, and was scrapped. Chrysler Rail Transport is looking at purchasing 4 new NRE 3GS21B powered by the durable Cummins power plants. If the purchase is sucessful, they will be doing a marketing campaign, similar to this Ram Trucks commercial from last year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNOhqEuW5R8
Ill work on this paper railroad when I have more time.
60' boxcars of stampings are also a common sight. CRTX only handles the switching for Chrysler related traffic. Conrail/Conrail SA still handles local, non Chrysler related customers.