Fresh Vegetables Badly Handled by Rail
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EEDS Kirkgate Market Wholesale La Fruit, Flower and Potato Merchants' Association is complaining of unsatisfactory service Irons railway companies, to which a great deal of its members' traffic has been transferred from road haulage, following the reduction of petrol rations.
The Association is, therefore, supporting an. effort by Leeds and District 'General Carriers', the recently formed organization of road haulage operators carrying such market produce, ta obtain a revision of "cuts " in their petrol allowances. The request for this revision • has been put forward in a memorandum submitted to Major F. S. Eastwood, the Transport ConirniSsioner for the North-Eastern Region, by the carriers' organization.
A resolution which a meeting of the merchants' association, adopted, last week, in support of the memorandum stated: " The experience of this trade i's that the railway companies are not handling the traffic to our satisfaction, particularly applying to fresh vegetables. There are cases of deliveries taking two or three days where previously one day was the rule. . . The goods so delivered are out of condition owing to the delay, and serious loss is sustained both from deterioration and wastage."
Mr. Harry Clark, chairman and sepretary of Leeds and District General Carriers, told our Yorkshire correspondent that long-distance road traffic both to and from the Leeds Kirkgate wholesale produce market has been almost completely eliminated through fuel reductions and Government authorities' insistence on transit by rail.
Speaking generally, said Mr. Clark, the road operators concerned were able to work only two or three days a week.
In their memorandum to the Transport Commissioner, the carriers submit that no other class of road operators has suffered such drastic restriction concerning their regular traffic. They have been carrying this traffic for 15 to 20 years, and they feel a sense of injustice at losing this work from longstanding customers.