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Piggy-backing more in it for rail than road
Page 78
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4‘ w E are entering a period which will see the start of road/rail• co-operation." No, this was not said to me by Dr. Beeching, or by Derek Good (the R.H.A. chairman)—not even by Mr. Marples. I was, in fact, in the plush Washington multi-storey office block which houses not only the American Trucking Associations, but all the constituent associations. My host, who had said that, was Walter W. Belson, director of public relations and assistant to the president.
The main problem, Walter Belson felt, was no longer competition between truckers, but competition with other modes of transport. For instance, air transport (as I explained in the February 7 issue) has entered a make-or-break avenue in its bid for freight traffic with fantastically expensive four-jet, all-freight aircraft.
Road transport is still bedevilled by the American constitution, which virtually forbids Federal intervention in purely intra-State matters. Consequently, practically every legal requirement you can name varies from State to State. But it is passing.
There is, Mr. Belson explained, a large degree of licence reciprocity between States. Each recognizes the other's licences for cars, but for trucks such unanimity has not yet been reached, although progress has been made. Tax reciprocity is still awaited, and an operator might have to pay taxes to each State into which he wants to operate.
Weights and dimensions used to be the worst problem between States, but this has now largely been evened out.
One of the ways an operator can overcome varying State -requirements is through piggy-backing (shipping semitrailers by rail and collecting and delivering them with intra-State tractive units at the two terminii). We had got on to piggy-back working when Mr. Belson made his road/rail co-operation remark.
It really is no use trying. to compare this country with Americaon the subject of piggy-backing, except on the broadest principles. Apart from any other reason at all, the U.S.A. still has some 700 railroad companies, of which about 100 can be described as " major " concerns. Some of these co-operate on piggy-backing; others don't.
• I was reminded, whilst talking about this to Mr. Belson. that some days before T had been discussing it with Gerald Eskow, the Yale Express president, in New York. Subsequently I was to talk about it a lot with both American and Canadian truckers. I came away with an impression that road transport operators accept the idea, but are very afraid (with considerable justification) of the railway companies' intentions.
There are five basic types of piggyback movement. The first is where rail D20
takes the trailer from a haulier within the same State, the haulier doing collection and delivery. The second is where the railway uses its own trailers and does its own collection and-delivery. The third method is where the customer loads his own semi-trailers, which are then Picked up and delivered by a railway tractive unit. The fourth method is similar, except ,that, if the customer's premises are rail-connected, he can load the trailers: on to his own flat wagon, which ii then trunked by rail and delivery is effected by a railway tractive unit. The fifth method is where road and rail operate jointly over connecting territories, thus giving each a much longer radius of operation than that actually licensed.
However, most railways will not operate plan No. 1. -This, say truckers, amounts to discrimination.Plan No. 3 is becoming popular because leasing companies can use it to sell semi-trailers to traders.
The A.T.A. position is that it favours joint rate and service facilities between any forms of transport; but this ideal, alas, is not often attained. Classification of traffic for rates is a thorny matter. A semi-trailer load might be worth $400-500 on ordinary truck rates, but if a leased trailer is used by a customer who gets a trailer rate from the railway company (which, of course, is very eager to accommodate him), the same load might move at a trailer rate of $941 Hauliers are losing a lot of revenue this way, and can do little about it in the absence of a road/rail agreement. On the brighter side, however, road hauliers had their best-ever year for revenue in 1963, despite the depredations of piggybacking.
Some idea of the inroads railways have been making can be seen from the fact that the number of railways offering piggy-back facilities have jumped from 19 in 1955 to 61 last year. The A.T.A. estimates that rail, or rail-owned, companies currently own 15,000 semi-trailers used exclusively by traders for piggyback workings. (Needless to say, all this represents a dead loss to hauliers.) So, you see, piggy-backing is not necessarily a profitable matter for road hauliers. In fact, American experience is very much the reverse.
Piggy-backing is not new. Walter Belson showed me the first picture on record of a piggy-back operation. It shows a horse wagon being pulled up a ramp on to the flat wagon behind a tram. The date? 1895. The first known piggy-back movement was in 1870. It had a 'short-lived vogue in the 1920s.
Changed Conditions
Why, having twice failed to be seriously used by the railways, is if-now one of the main spearheaCls of their attack on road _transport? The answer, in Walter Belson's view, is that the road Transport industry was not then, a big competitor with the railways. Now, with road/rail co-ordination clearly indicated as a reality of the future, the railroads seem to be taking the familiar position they have always assumed.
When a rapport has been achieved, then a useful service can develop, exactly as envisaged by Walter Belson. .
One such example is the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad Inc., Which piggy-backs extensively, particularly under plan No. I. With agreed charges and the haulier sub-contracting the trunk piggy.back work to C: and E.I., this now accounts for between 11 and 15 per cent of the railway company's revenue..
Incidentally, in an interview with the American Journal of Commerce, M. A. WatkiK assistant manager of the C. and E.I. motorservices, gave another reason for plan No. I not being easily accepted. From the railroad point of view, they fear that hauliers will only use the service to balance out the peak traffic flows, thereby creating uneven operations (which, of course, are uneconomic) for the railway company.
Surely this is the classic example? Each side suspects the other. When they do get together, and discuss their different points of view, the thing works very well.
Incidentally, having mentioned the road and rail fears about piggy-backing, I ought to point out a third (and very active) lobby. This is individual States. For example, the Portland Oregonian as long ago as 1959 was campaigning against the practice. The reason? Each time a 40-wagon piggy-back train leaves Portland for California with 60 highway semi-trailers aboard, the State highway department loses $3,000 in ton-mileage taxes.
. Commercial vehicles do, in fact, pay more than a third of the total highway ta,xes. Hence the States' concern.