Yes, John Kneiling, most famous for being a Trains Magazine columnist, was so influential that 98% of modern rail management bows to his every word and uses him as a touchstone of how to operate their businesses.

You guys crack me up. He was a tinhorn columnist. Railroads ditched most loose car because most loose car is also lost money. More labor = less profit. It became a nuisance business in an industrial system whose economies of scale were growing rapidly.

Don't like it? Fine. Think it's a mistake? Fine. Think it's not profitable? Bzzzt.

The industry didn't do jack squat *because* of Kneiling. The situation is the reverse; Kneiling (tinhorn though he was) saw the writing on the wall on a lot of things. He was the Theodore Judah of the modern railroad age.

Now I'll let you all go back to carping about how great railroading would be today if Staggers had never happened.