Word: piggybacking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...PIGGYBACK BOOM...
...steep, truck-clogged grade in California's Sierra Nevada moun tains, the Southern Pacific Railroad recently erected a sign: "Take the trucks off the highway. Put the trucks on piggyback." The railroad's sign symbolized a growing problem for the U.S. trucking industry. Piggybacking, which was originally envisioned as a happy marriage between trucks and railroads, has zoomed 180% (to some 210,000 carloadings annually) since 1954, and the outlook is for a $1 billion business by 1965. But so far, railroads have puffed off with most of the profits. Of 39 roads offering some form of piggyback...
Many railroads are frank to admit that they are out to dominate piggybacking, argue that it is a matter of economic necessity. From 1939 to 1954, the railroads' share of intercity freight slumped from 63% to less than 50%, while the truckers' share jumped from 10% to 19%. Now, with the help of piggybacking, the roads hope to win back lost ground. Last year truck business slipped to 17.7%, while railroads just about held their own. Says Southern Pacific's Assistant General Freight Agent Ray F. Robinson: "Ninetynine percent of our piggyback business is business we never...
...biggest piggybackers, the Pennsy and the New York, New Haven & Hartford, have elaborate cooperative programs to handle truck-company trailers as well as their own, provide such economical service that more and more highway companies are putting . their trailers on flatcars for trips of 500 miles or more. Drivers' wages (as high as $175 a week), highway taxes and equipment costs are so steep that some truckers are thus able to snip as much as 9? per mile from their 30?-per-mile highway costs. By going piggyback, says the Rail-Trailer Co., which solicits business for the railroads...
...trouble, say truckers, is that piggyback's impressive savings may prove their undoing. They fear that while short-run profits may rise, piggybacking leaves the door open for railroads to steal away bigger and bigger chunks of the freight market with their own trailer fleets. Says the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association, some of whose members look on piggybacking with a jaundiced eye: "Let's say the ABC trucking company operates a fleet of 1,000 power units and 1,500 trailers from the Midwest to the Eastern seaboard. Then the company decides to use piggyback. It disposes...