included Kahns, Oscar Mayer, and Rath Packing. FGE became a major producer of railroad freight cars, mostly insulated or refrigerated boxcars, although they eventually built other railcars as well. FGE's main railcar production, in keeping with its focus, was refrigerated cars, originally ice-cooled boxcars and insulated (but not cooled) boxcars, and then mechanical refrigerated cars, or "reefers", as technology developed. FGE insulated boxcars, built with wood rather than steel for its better insulating qualities, became popular in the 1960s and 1970s. FGE insulated boxcars were used to transport items that needed protection from heat or freezing but not necessarily separate cooling such as that provided by refrigerated railcars. FGE built railcars and then leased them to the group of railroads that owned FGE. Fruit Growers Express also produced and maintained its own fleet of railcars for independent leasing. In the 1970s, when trucking started to bite into the market of insulated boxcars moving produce, FGE branched into other types of railcar production, notably the production of bay window cabooses and intermodal equipment for FGE's own use and that of its parent railroads. By the mid-1980s, when safety laws were relaxed and automated technology introduced, the caboose ultimately became obsolete, eliminating this production segment for FGE. With increased competition from trucks hauling produce on highways and the consolidation of the railroad industry in the 1980s spurred by the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, Fruit Growers Express, as a consortium, found that its markets shrank. With the mergers that formed Norfolk Southern in 1982 and CSX in 1986 and both companies subsequent acquisitions, a duopoly of major railroads with vast resources and routes was effectively created on the east coast and midwest, eroding further need for FGE as an independent entity. The company is now a paper entity controlled by the CSX Corporation, the successor railroad to the majority of Fruit Growers Express final ownership. Fruit Growers Express was headquartered in Washington, DC, with major railcar shops in Alexandria, Virginia, Jacksonville, Florida and Indiana Harbor, Indiana. At its peak, the Alexandria FGE facility, originally located at the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac Railroad's busy Potomac Yards but in 1925 relocated to nearby Cameron Yards, the Southern Railway's switching yard in Alexandria. At its peak, FGE's Alexandria facility could produce 1,000 railcars per year. The Alexandria railcar facility had stopped building freight cars and cabooses by 1981, and the maintenance facility was closed down