Railways "Like Oliver Twist"
Page 35
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" I GIVE you five years' figures and, I like Oliver Twist, he asks for more! " said Mr. Henry Backhouse, Jnr., criticizing a railway solicitor's submission in a case at Chester last week.
Messrs. Offiey Bros., Oak Grove, Whitby, Wirral, were applying, before the North-Western Licensing Authority, Mr. W. Chamberlain, for permission to acquire a 3-ton tank wagon.
Mr. Backhouse, fer the firm, said the tank would be a permanent fixture and would be subdivided into three compartments. During 1936, he said, 156,550 galls. of petroleum products were delivered in tank wagons by the applicants and during 1937, they delivered 389,000 galls., or more than double the quantity. There were 211 tank loads carried in 1936 and 460 in 1937. The industry was increasing and they were inducing customers, so far as possible, to put down bulk storage
tanks, and in view of that they would require road vehicles to deliver the petroleum products.
Mr. G. H. P. Beames, for the railways, said this case indicated that there was a grave tendency for a' loophole in the Act to be exploited from time to time. If a contract licence were to be issued, he said, it was possible for the general business to be developed at the expense of other transport.
Once having granted such a vehicle for a particular type bf traffic, said Mr. Beames, the Authority was going to have a welter of applications for contract vehicles of this type and, whilst this vehicle could not be used in any other way, it was one of a fleet and would release other vehicles to' enter into more competitive work. Apart from that, he submitted, the figures which had been given were incomplete, as no tonnage figures were mentioned.
In reply, Mr. Backhouse said Mr. Bearries had asked for some more figures, and remarked that the chairman Would remember the difficulty they had in a recent case to get extra figures from the railway companies— and in the end they got figures for twenty weeks! He was giving the Authority no fewer than five years' figures.
The firm's increase had been substantially maintained from the whole of their old customers. To his mind, the tonnage figures would not have helped Mr. Beames in this particular application, but if the figures were given, the Authority would see that it woad be possible for the objectors to work out the applicant's rates.
Decision was re-served.