R freight suffers massive setback
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RAIL'S recovery in the freight market took a massive knock with a ten per cent drop in carryings contributing towards annual report for 1980, :s out that the recession year's three-month steel t back its slow recovery 66m freight loss in 1975 I break even in 1979.
3rnes the recession for a E100m to £120m drop Lie and says that most of tributable to the decline it traffic. According to d Haulage Association, hauliers lost up to ri revenue last year, 20 per cent of their 1979 .evitalised sections of ht did comparatively ith international train ffic showing "encouragovvth, and Speedlink lad traffic continuing to By the end of last year, on 8 grants had been ider the 1974 Railways resenting E29m in total s private sidings and
has also been an im?.nt overall in parcels rvith revenue rising by rer cent to E141.7m, the volume fell from to 760,000 tonnes, and there was a small surplus at the end of the year. It expects further improvement in performance when the Rail Express Parcels collection and delivery service provided under contract by National Carriers is withdrawn at the end of June.
Freightliners Ltd, which boasted a £0.9m trading profit for the first half of 1980 (CM, September 6, 1980), turned in a E1.4m profit for the whole year. Deep sea maritime business grew by 19 per cent, underlining the fact that Freightliner is developing more in this market than in the integrated transport mould created for it under the 1968 Transport Act. The Freightliner lorry fleet was cut last year by six per cent to 547 tractive units which handle about 40 per cent of the company's road traffic. The rest is handled by hire or reward hauliers.
According to the BR annual report, 11,957 of the 706,139 containers forwarded last year by Freightliner went throughout by road. Of these, 3,325 went that way in order to maximise the Freightliner lorry fleet's productivity, and the rest went in part performance of an overall contract which stipulates that the majority should go by rail.
BR chairman Sir Peter Parker said last week: "If 1980 was a grim year, 1981 looks grimmer. Our markets are a mirror image of the economy,"