Road/rail times spark row
Page 8
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
• A row has broken out over a leaflet produced by rail terminal operator Wakefield Europort comparing road and rail journey times to various continental destinations.
Manchester haulier Baxendale Engineering is challenging the road journey times, saying some estimates are double the right Figure. For example, the leaflet claims that driving to Barcelona takes 84 hours: Baxendale say its drivers take 44 hours working within the legal limits. Baxendale driver Rick Chisnall says: "This is a complete misrepresentation and makes the haulage industry look bad and uncompetitive." Europort says that it is not in competition with hauliers and stresses that its figures were gathered by a research company after getting journey times from a number of international operators. According to Rai'freight: "The times we list are typical journey times. Inevitably some operators are quicker and some worse, but to do the Barcelona run in 44 hours is quite incredible!'