Aussie haulage group aims high in Europe
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• Thomas Nationwide Transport, the £77m Australian-based group, plans to take a sizeable share of the European freight market. And over the next seven or eight years TNT aims to become the "most completecarrier in the EEC — involved in many categories of freight and operating multi mode services.
This was revealed last week at a press conference in London held to announce details of the London-Paris daily scheduled express freight service which TNT will operate through its Kwikasair subsidiary (CM July 27).
The express service will start on October 1 as a two-tier operation. Rigid 5 /6-ton vans will run overnight via Dover/Calais to provide next-morning delivery, while unaccompanied trailers will travel on a "second-day" schedule, using a new PooleCherbourg ferry.
The latter service is run by Truckline Ferries, in which Kwikasair has a minority holding. Truckline's director-general, M. Pierre Legras. is also managing the Paris end of the Kwikasair service and he told CM that the French terminal for this would be at Pantin, in north-east Paris, beside the ring road and close to the rail freight yard from which a Novatrans road /rail service operates. The warehousing complex at Garonor may also be used by Kwikasair.
At the London end, Kwikasair's terminal will be on Butler's site at Greenford, Middlesex, where customs clearance is provided.
Kwikasair expects to treble its LondonParis express freight fleet by June 1974, and already has plans to serve the Midlands through East Coast ports.
TNT's managing director, Sir Peter Abeles, said last week that road /rail co-ordination had been a feature of the group's growth elsewhere and they were looking at this in Europe. In Australia and Canada they chartered whole freight trains and handled the traffic through their own private depots. It was possible that they might come to an arrangement with BR.
(Details of TNT's services in many countries were given in CM on June 15.)