EWS plans to triple its railfreight loads
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by Miles Brignall • The UK's leading railfreight provider is warning hauliers that it plans to triple the amount of freight carried by rail to 18% of all freight movements.
Ed Burkhardt, chairman of private railfreight firm English Welsh & Scottish Railways, says there is no reason why the amount of goods carried by rail in the UK cannot match the 18% carried by EWS in other countries. Such a move would be bound to have a serious impact on road hauliers.
Appearing in front of the Transport Select Committee last week, Burkhardt said assuming the Government does not allow the general use of 44-tonne trucks, EWS is on course to triple volumes over the next 10
years. Citing the numbers of companies, including many of the UK's supermarkets, now looking at rail as way of moving goods, he said the only constraint at the moment was a lack of rolling stock. EWS's target markets include food and drink and steel.
The company will take delivery of 280 new locomotives in July and it has ordered 2,500 wagons to be delivered over the next five years.
Burkhardt told the committee's MPs that the best thing that could happen to railfreight industry was the proper enforcement of road haulage.
He claimed that it costs £1 per mile to run a truck legally, while some operators are charging as little as 70p per mile.