Improved Haulage Facilities for the I. of W.
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TRADERS in and visitors to the Isle I. of Wight should materially benefit from the improved transport facilities that are being offered by Pickfords. Ltd., through the medium of its reconstructed depot at Cowes, which was formally vened by Sir Herbert Walker. K.C.13., on Thursday of last week.
The company and its associated links have depots on the mainland at Southampton. Gosport and Portsmouth, from which frequent boat services—there are 25 vessels—carry merchandise and luggage to and from the Island, in which a fleet of about 50 road motors is stationed. These vehicles provide a distribution service for the whole of the Island, the principal centres of which receive up to five deliveries per day. The approximate annual tonnage dealt with is 100,000.
The transit platforms and sheds of the remodelled depot have a frontage of 184 ft. to the waterway and 195 ft. frontage of backing docks for road motors. The working space, which is used to good advantage, occupies about 10,000 sq. ft., of which 4,000 sq. ft. represents storage accommodation and the remainder loading bays and platforms. Some idea of the company's extensive ramifications in the Island can be gathered from the fact that it has seven wharves, four furniture depositories, three merchandise stores and 12 offices and depots located there.
The improvements to the new wharf have cost nearly £19,000, but as they will enable improved service to be given, with reduced time for loading and unloading, it can be regarded as money well spent.
A further development is the use of cages for relatively small packages. Each cage, holding about 1 ton of goods, is loaded at the Southern Rail
way's new goods depot at Fratton, and conveyed to the Portsmouth wharf, where it is placed on board a vessel bound for the Island. Unloading, or handling of the individual packages, is thus unnecessary between Fratton and Cowes, in either direction.
Sir Herbert Walker, in a speech at a luncheon which followed the opening, said that, at one time, the Island was a cockpit of competition. He thought competition a mixed blessing.