COFC (Container on Flat Car). This form of transport is related to inter-modal transport in which a container with cargo in it would have been transported by sea or by road to a railhead and then loaded on to a flat rail-car for the remainder of the journey by rail. The deregulation of the railways in the United States in 1980 was extended to the intermodal COFC transport in March 1981 and this is one method of transporting goods which may have been the forerunner to other intermodal transport methods operated for containers, such as the DST or “Double stack trains” or the “piggy-back trains” operated by some railway companies and even traditional ocean carriers in the U.S.
