Rail Freight Rates to Rise Soon?
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FROM OUR INDUSTRIAL CORRESPONDENT NEW rates for the carriage of freight on the railways are expected to be announced by Dr Beeching's British Railways Board before the end of the year.
The highest increases can be expected to go on the type of traffic, such as parcels and sundries, which the railways would be pleased to lose and Which at present is causing heavy losses.
But large, regular consignments—of the sort that are really profitable and for which there is the keenest competition from road hauliers--may actually. be reduced. This will apply particularly to traffic for the liner trains.
Some of the rates may never he announced, for the railways are now free to conclude private contracts with firms for the movement of their goods on special terms.
Several such contracts have recently been signed, and commercial staff under Mr. L. H. Williams. the former Shell man in charge of that side of the business, are hard at work persuading more industrialists to go over to rail.
Several finnS now run regular company trains, some in their, own distinctive liveries. One is the Ford Motor Company, which runs a train a night in each direction between its plant at Dagenham and its new Merseyside factory at Halewood. Special running stack with the company's . blue-and-white oval trade mark is going into service and eventually it is hoped to run three trains a night in each direction.
Other companies Which have .regular trains for their products are Cadburys, Bird's Eye Foods and Eskimo. • There have also recently been agreements with the Mobil. Petrofina and Gulf Oil companies, under which use of rail for bulk shipments has been arranged on a longterm basis.
But so far, at least. the railways cannot point to any single contract and claim that it represents a direct switch from road to