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The Long View
Page 54
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CHANGES in the direction and quantity of 1....../goods-tratlic movements can sometimes be foreseen long before they occur and the wise haulier will always scan the skyline as well as the foreground. A straw was recently held in the wind by Sir Brian Robertson, chairman of the British Transport Commission.
He announced that the Commission had approved in principle the expenditure of about E2m. on a huge new marshalling yard at Margam, in South Wales, to serve the iron and steel works and to accelerate the movement of rail traffic to and from the west. The marshalling yard at the Severn Tunnel Junction is also to be greatly extended. These deielopments signify the railways' determination to regain steel traffic lost to road transport, on which many hauliers rely for either outward or return loads from the Principality.
He also made it clear that the Commission would do anything within their power to remove the disadvantages under which the South Wales ports now labour. It is at present more costly for the trader in the Midlands to ship his goods overseas from South Wales than from Merseyside, where the apportionment of handling costs between the exporter and shipowner is more favourable to the exporter.
Negotiations between the two parties, encouraged by the .B.T.C., are taking place in an effort to secure the adoption of the Mersey practice in South Wales. If they are successful, some export traffic may well be re-routed and the pattern of road haulage from the Midlands and elsewhere may undergo a marked change. This trend will be facilitated by improvements costing over Om. which have been authorized at the South Wales docks.
Sir Brian's statement presaged increased corn. petition between road and rail and between the private-enterprise and State-owned sections of the road haulage industry. British Road Services now have over 670 vehicles based in South Wales and Monmouthshire, and they are improving their main depots at Swansea, Bridgend, Cardiff and Newport. Sir Brian acknowledged that B.R.S. were subjected to keen competition in South Wales, but said that they were making sure that they had the best available resources to deal with it. He thus issued a challenge that free-enterprise hauliers must equip themselves to meet, and interworking is the best method of doing so.