wagonload

Noun

wagonload (plural wagonloads)

1. The amount that can be loaded onto a wagon.
   • Then they piled up the forests they had cut down into a vast pyre in circuit equal to a city, and having let a lake into the caldron that was to seethe it, and carried for eight months in succession a hundred daily wagons[-]load of salt to season the pot, they kindled the crackling mass, and as it...1853 December, “Finis of the Fins”, in Fraser’s Magazine (Fishing Excerpts; volume II), volume XLVIII, number CCLXXXVIII, page 702
   • The countryside through which the line passes grows some beet, too. Ten wagonloads a day are despatched from Fethard and smaller quantities from Farranaleen, Laffan's Bridge and Horse & Jockey.1957 May, Walter McGrath, “The Thurles-Clonmel Line, C.I.E.”, in Railway Magazine, page 320

   Synonyms:

   wagonful

2. The load of a wagon.
3. A type of freight train service in which individual wagons have separate destinations and/or cargos.
   • This firm regularly consigns margarine in palletised wagon-loads to a wide variety of destinations.1961 September, B. Perren, “The Tilbury Line serves industrial North Thameside”, in Modern Railways, page 359
   • Tinsley Yard in Sheffield was once one of the largest and most advanced 'hump' marshalling yards in the world. But a decline in wagonload freight led to its swift demise and much of the site has lain derelict since the 1980s. MICHAEL RHODES examines this rise and fall in Tinsley's fortunes, and the...2021 June 2, “Tinsley reborn...”, in RAIL, number 932, page 33
4. (informal) A very large amount.

   Synonyms:

   abundance, battalion, arseload, assload, bellyload, boatload, brimful, busload, bucketful, bucketload