Word: freighting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...cheaper to transmit electricity than to ship coal-and when the coal industry itself began to talk of laying coal pipelines* to cut transporting costs, the railroads got busy improving their service. They modernized their equipment, studied the needs of the coal industry, began running fast, "unitized" freights of coal straight from mine to market, thus cutting much of the yard operations and interchanges that account for one-third the cost of all freight-car movements on eastern railroads. The eastern carriers only a month ago passed on their savings by cutting coal freight rates by a third, enabling coal...
Liner Trains. Like most U.S. railroaders, Beeching also wants to carry more freight and fewer passengers. Hoping to attract more business from industry, he will ask for $280 million to start "Liner Train" service, in which piggyback trains would run between major British cities on frequent, fast schedules. Under Beeching's plan, which Parliament is expected to adopt, the comfortable sound of the puffing billies chugging through the British countryside will become a thing of the past. Beeching is willing to trade it for the rustle of pound notes...