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All Britain's major national daily newspapers are now delivered by road ... good news for carriers like Newsflow and Newsfast ... bad news for British Rail. Commercial Motor charts the paper distribution revolution of the past 18 months.
IN This will go down as the year Britain's newspapers went off the rails and on to the motorways — giving road transport, and two carriers in particular, one of their biggest scoops.
TNT Newsfast was the outfit which started it all by doing a secret deal with Rupert Murdoch three years ago to ferry his four titles from picket-bound Wapping. For most of the year it has vied with rival NFC Newsflow for the rest of the newspaper contracts.
They argue about how many papers each carries. Newsflow's development director John Sherman says its deals with Express Newspapers, Mirror Newspapers and Associated Newspapers give it between 70% and 90% of contracts.
This is "rubbish" responds Alan Jones, boss of TNT. As Newsfast carries the biggest circulation dailies in the popular and quality markets, The Sun and The Daily Telegraph, and on Sunday The News of the World and The Sunday Times, it certainly has the lion's share in volume terms.
The loser, of course, has been British Rail. In the wake of the Wapping breakthrough by TNT and a claim by Mirror owner Robert Maxwell in July 1987 that his papers would soon be delivered by road, BR was desperate to cling on to its business.
FREIGHT TRAINS
Even this year BR was denying in Commercial Motor (14-20 January) that its newspaper runs — where issues were sorted on overnight freight trains — faced cancellation after almost a century.
Although many of its contracts were coming to an end, the railways maintained a determination to win back custom. BR must have known, however, that the lid was closing on its business.
A move by the big newspapers from Fleet Street printing plants to the regions in the post-Wapping era, and tempting rates from the two competing road companies, meant it made little sense for publishers to stick to time-honoured rail.
The question was, which of Newsflow or Newsfast would end the summer victorious? Both had staked heavily on distribution networks, vehicles and high-flying personnel to head their operations.
In February we revealed that several newspaper groups were considering breaking contracts with BR and were talking to Newsflow and Newsfast (CM 24 February-2 March).
In April, one of these groups, Associated Newspapers, gave its two contracts, for The Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, to Newsflow. The next week, rival Express Newspapers transferred its business to the same carrier.
Newsflow was exultant at the coups. Apart from the Telegraph and News Inter