Word: freight
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...earnest young writer launching a first novel is like a man trying to raft his belongings across a flooded river. The problem, clearly, is to get the essential items safely over. The temptation is to pile everything on. Paul Brodeur's story nearly founders under its symbolic freight. But the voyage into a world where inner disorder and outer chaos mirror each other makes an absorbing trip...
Like most railroaders, Maidman wants to concentrate on freight, but he picked a startling way to get rid of commuters: he offered to buy them out. If they would agree to a cutback in service from three round trips daily to two one-way trips at peak hours, he would put on a comfortable, air-conditioned streamliner. More important, if the 200 commuters agreed unanimously to his scrapping all commuter services, he would pay them $1,000 each. How to identify all those eligible to collect? Says Maidman: "The conductors know all the commuters on the line." At week...
...reason for the demand is that the U.S. boxcar population has dropped from 700,000 in 1958 to 571,367 today. In the normal flow of freight traffic, railroads usually handle a large number of one another's boxcars, and rare is the half-mile-long freight train that is not a geographically fascinating string of many-colored U.S. railroad names. For each day that a line keeps another's boxcar after it is unloaded, it pays an allowance of $2.88-a fee that has not changed since 1902. That price is cheaper than buying expensive new boxcars...
Something must be done to rejuvenate the railroad industry, which remains the sick man of American transportation. Over the last two decades the industry has declined markedly: in 1944 the railroads carried 69 per cent of all commercial freight; in 1960 they carried only 44 per cent. Although the western and southern railways continue to show a profit, the eastern lines lost $25 million in 1960 and $96 million in 1961. The railroads hope that mergers will reduce this trend by sharply reducing operating costs--the Pennsylvania and the New York Central alone hope to save $75 million annually through...
Theoretically, railways can provide cheaper transportation than can trucks for a wide range of goods, especially over long distance. Because of distortions in their rate structure, however, they are priced out of the market on many items and are forced to ship a third of their freight at a loss. For example, the rates on Army and Navy ammunition and supplies are so high (they produce 500 per cent profit) the trucking industry is able to undercut them...