“The Revolutionary Activities of the Refrigerator Car. Growing Importance of the ’Icebox on Wheels’. No single event in the last century had more significance to the perishable food industry than the successful shipment under ice […] the successful combination of transportation and continuous refrigeration in the refrigerator outranks the importance of even such momentous discoveries of milk pasteurizing, the canning process, and large-scale cold storage warehousing.”

Walter P. Hedden, How Great Cities are Fed, 1929