A post shows a rail freight tanker with “COVID-19” stamped on one side.
“Wtf is that? They shipping it via locomotive now???,” one Facebook user wrote, incredulously, in a comment on one of the posts. Another user asked if it came from China., AFP established that the freight tankers are operated by GATX, a Chicago-headquartered locomotive group that specializes in rail tanker cars and\xa0locomotive leasing. The company’s name appears on the other end of the tanker featured in the image., The GATX website shows tanker cars like the one in the Facebook posts, featuring the same six vertical yellow-painted stripes. As circled in red below, the “COVID-19” label in the viral picture does not match the visual stenciling of the GATX tanker cars., “GATX is aware of a manipulated image being circulated on the internet, and please note that this picture is a fake,” the company told AFP by email. “No such stencil exists, and in fact this form of stenciling would not be allowed under reporting marks requirements, as dictated by the Association of American Railroads.”, The Association of American Railroads (AAR) referred AFP to RailInc, a company that manages an industry-wide database., "We have no Mark registered in our system that matches to COVID,” Steve Hinkson, the Director of RailInc Corporate Communications, said by email. “Further, the rules governing registered Marks only allow for 2-4 alpha numeric characters. COVID would not meet that standard.", RailInc also indicated that the AAR guide on certification generally mandates three to four letters as a means of identifying the tanker car owner, followed by up to six digits., AFP Fact Check has debunked more than 170 examples of false and misleading\xa0information about the novel coronavirus. You can find the complete list of our fact-checks on the topic in English here., The misleading tanker claim was also reported by Snopes, a fact-check organization, here., , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
Photo of ‘COVID-19’ rail tanker is not genuine | AFP Fact Check