Union Tank Car Company bond certificate 1977

Nice stock-sized bond with a photo vignette of the company's oil tanker rail car.  Issued and cancelled.  Various denominations.  Dated 1977.

Union Tank Car Company or UTLX (their best known reporting mark) is a railway equipment leasing company (and car maintenance / manufacturing) headquartered in metro Chicago, Illinois. As the name says, they specialize in tank cars, and covered hopper cars.

Founded in 1866 by J. J. Vandergrift, in response to the economic activities of Standard Oil, as of September 2005, according to their site, they have about 80,000 cars in their fleet.

Vandergrift was involved in the conflicts in the oil regions of Western Pennsylvania in the 1860s–1870s. Eventually, Union Tank Car Company and his other holdings, which included pipeline and riverboat transport companies, merged with the company that later became Standard Oil. Rockefeller, once Captain Vandergrift's nemesis, made him Vice President of Standard Oil. Captain Jacob J. Vandergrift also had a town built and named in his honor by George G. McMurtry in Western Pennsylvania in 1895.

Standard Oil was better known for lubrication than for transportation, but a key to its success was Union Tank Line, its railcar subsidiary. Standard Oil leader John D. Rockefeller used tank cars as his "secret weapon" to dominate the industry by gaining control of oil shipping. As Rockefeller spiraled upward in the oil industry, he expanded his domination of rail transportation by taking over several railcar suppliers until almost all tank cars carried the now- familiar UTLX identification.

When federal and state governments began flexing their new regulatory muscle against the monopoly, Union Tank Line was an obvious target. On July 14, 1891, the Standard trust dodged the legal assault by forming a "separate" corporation, the Union Tank Line Company, dedicated to transportation. Though Union Tank Line was now technically independent, it was still owned by Standard Oil and served only the company's refineries. When the U.S. Supreme Court broke up Standard in 1911, Union Tank Line's 40 employees faced a new crisis. Previously the company's only mission was to provide efficient transportation for all Standard refineries.  In 1919 Union Tank Line bolstered its finances by listing on the New York Stock Exchange. Executives changed its name to Union Tank Car Company so investors wouldn't misperceive it as one of the railroads which had recently come under tight ICC regulation.

TransUnion was formed as a holding company in 1968, and began acquiring credit bureaus. The Marmon Group acquired TransUnion in 1981.  Union Tank Car Company is still owned by Marmon, which in turn is a 100% owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.