Hearing Incomplete after Six Months
Page 30
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THE whole of a third day (last I Friday) was devoted by Mr. W. Chamberlain, North-Western Licensing Authority, to hearing an application by Collier Daniels Transport, Ltd., for an extra vehicle for its trunk service from Manchester to London and Southampton, Although the application was lodged early in Ociober last, the hearing is not yet complete and cannot be listed again before the end of this month. At the same time, Mr. Chamberlain emphatically declined to consider the issue of a short-term licence, because, on a railway appeal, a new vehicle granted by Sir William Hart, the Deputy Licensing Authority, had been struck off by the Appeal Tribunal.
Mr. Henry Backhouse, for the applicant, pleaded, without success, that the Tribunal's ruling was upon a technical defect with regard to evidence, and that the new application was based on further evidence of increased need.
Practically the whole of the third day was taken up by witnesses for the
railway companies. Included among those called were two transport managers for textile concerns, who declared that the rail facilities for all the goods carried by the applicant were commercially suitable and adequate. They admitted, however, that their.companies had not required the late-collection facilities which road transport offered.
Half a dozen of the witnesses were railway representatives, who said that the rail traffic lost to road transport was diverted by cheaper rates.
Mr. Backhouse pointed out that, as these consignments to the London and Southampton docks were all at through rates fixed by 'conference, the reason said to have been given by railway customers for the change-over to road could not be true, unless there were some back-payments "over the Otherwise, the through rate was the same whether the goods reached the ship by road or rail.
The applicant company is stated to be hiring vehicles at an uneconomic rate.