Transportation company

“ Originally the term 'car service' included the 'movement, distribution, exchange, interchange, and return of cars used in the transportation of property.' As amended the term is made to include the use, control, supply, movement, distribution, etc., not only of cars, but of locomotives and other vehicles. It is further extended to include, 'the supply, movement, and operation of trains by any carrier by railroad subject to this act' and so requires every carrier by railroad 'to furnish safe and adequate car service. ”

“ If the cab which carries the passengers from the hotel to the ferry landing is engaged in interstate transportation, why is not the porter who carries the traveler's trunk from his room to the carriage also so engaged? If the cab service is interstate transportation, are the drivers of the cabs and the dealers who supply hay and grain for the horses also engaged in interstate commerce? ”

“ Every railway company * * * has recognized the right of the public to demand transportation by the railway facilities which the public has permitted to be created of that class of matter which is known as 'express matter." Express companies have undoubtedly invested their capital and built up their business in the hope and expectation of securing, and keeping for themselves, such railway facilities as they needed, and railroad companies have likewise relied upon the express business as one of their important sources of income. ”

“ The transportation of passengers on a freight train, or on a mixed train, is subordinate to the transportation of freight,-a mere incident to the business of carrying freight. To furnish such cars as are necessary for the suitable and proper carriage of passengers involves the necessity of adopting that mode of carrying passengers which is best adapted to secure their safety and convenience. This can be accomplished better by operating a separate passenger train than by operating a mixed train ”

“ THE SUPPLY TRAIN.
July 3, 1904. My Dear Boy:—Blacksmiths’ horses and shoemakers’ wives proverbially go unshod. A railroad puts up its poorest sample of transportation in the routine handling of its own material and supplies. Company stuff is moved and handled last of all; and probably at maximum expense. For example, if we wish to ship a car of wheels to division headquarters we load them after we are lucky enough to get an available car. ”

“ It will not do to say that the transferring of grain through an elevator is one step in the process of transportation, and that, therefore, they are quasi common carriers discharging a public duty, and subject to public control. They are not carriers in any proper sense of the term. They may facilitate carriage; so does the boxing and packing of goods for transportation. The engineers, firemen, brakemen, and all the thousands of employes of a railroad company are helping the business of transportation ”

“ A co-operative company or a consolidated company of any honest and sensible variety, owning both the railroads and the steamboat lines, would divide the traffic in such a way as to secure the maximum economy and convenience, and would make a reasonable payment for the extra speed and other advantages of railway transit the main condition of selecting that method of transportation, with an option in the company under specified conditions to facilitate the full loading of trains and boats through the adjustment of rates. ”

“ Over very many of our railroads the contracts for transportation of goods are made, not with the owners of the roads, nor with the railroad companies themselves, but with transportation agencies or companies which have arrangements with the railroad companies for the carriage. ”

“ Through this well known and necessary practice of connecting cariers there has come about, without unity of ownership or physical operation, a singleness of charge and a continuity of transportation greatly to the advantage of the carrier, and beneficial to the great and growing commerce of the country. ”

“ Its whole object and effect are to make it more sure that railroad companies shall perform the duty resting upon them by virtue of their employment as common carriers, to use the utmost care and diligence in the transportation of passengers and goods. ”

“ A railroad company is a carrier of goods for the public, and as such is bound to carry safely whatever goods are intrusted to it for ransportation, within the course of its business, to the end of its route, and there deposit them in a suitable place for their owners or consignees. If the road of the company connects with other roads, and goods are received for transportation beyond the termination of its own line, there is superadded to its duty as a common carrier that of a forwarder by the connecting line ”

“ Agents or other officers of railroads and other transportation companies whose duty it is to receive freights shall receive all articles of the nature and kind received by such company for transportation whenever tendered at a regular depot, station, wharf, or boat landing, and every loaded car tendered at a side track, or any warehouse connected with the railroad by a siding, and shall forward the same by the route selected by the person tendering the freight under existing laws ”

“ By the Hepburn act it was declared that the term 'transportation' (italics ours) -- 'shall include cars and other vehicles and all instrumentalities and facilities of shipment or carriage, irrespective of ownership or of any contract, express or implied, for the use thereof, and all services in connection with the receipt, delivery, elevation, and transfer in transit, ventilation, refrigeration or icing, storage, and handling of property transported ”

“ When a motor carrier seeks to offer service where only rail transportation is presently authorized, the inherent advantages of the proposed service are a critical factor which the Commission must assess. ”

“ Furthermore, in carrying out these duties, such employees affect interstate commerce 'directly or closely and substantially.' Failure to perform their duties would preclude delivery to the railroad of cars which it considers essential to its transportation needs and would substantially impede the carrier's performance of its transportation function and thus the interstate commerce in which it is engaged. ”

“ Billions of dollars are invested in railroad properties. Millions of passengers, as well as millions of tons of freight, are moved each year by the railroad companies, and this transportation is carried on by a multitude of corporations working in different parts of the country, and subjected to varying and diverse conditions. ”

“ Therefore the shippers and buyers of goods at nine-tenths of the shipping points of the country must always be dependent on the facilities and rates offered by a single railway. Such rates of transportation as are fixed, be they high or low, must be paid, if business is carried on at all. And when we consider the ten per cent. of railway stations which are, or may be, junction points, we find that at least three-fourths of them are merely the junction of two lines owned by the same company. ”

“ We have here to consider not the case of an individual shipper or passenger dealing, at a disadvantage, with a powerful corporation, but that of a permanent arrangement between two corporations embracing within its sphere of operation a large part of the transportation business of the entire country. We need not, in this inquiry, examine the nature of the business of an express company, or rehearse the particular services it renders the public. ”

“ Paragraph (a) describes the carriers entitled to compensation:
'The term 'carrier' means a carrier by railroad which, during any part of the period of Federal control, engaged as a common carrier in general transportation, and competed for traffic, or connected, with a railroad under Federal control, and which sustained a deficit in its railway operating income for that portion (as a whole) of the period of Federal control during which it operated its own railroad or system of transportation ”

“ The latter service involves the transportation of general commodities, in any quantity, under motor carrier bills of lading and tariffs and at motor carrier rates. * * * Substituted service was being performed by applicant at the time of the hearing in January, 1945, over several routes most of which radiate out of Pittsburgh and Columbus. ”

“ That it has become the law and usage, and is one of the necessities of the express business, that the property confided to an express company for transportation should be kept while in transit in the immediate charge of the messenger or agent of such express company. ”

“ The railway companies agree to perform promptly such transportation and distribution service over their railroads as the telegraph company may require for its employees, supplies, and material, whether for work or use along the railroads or beyond or off their lines, and to furnish special trains, engines, crews, and equipment for distribution service, and outfit, boarding, and tool cars for work on their lines, whenever required by the telegraph company. The transportation of employees is to be authorized by passes to be issued by the railway companies on authorized request. ”

“ The points of difference between the railroad and other corporations are many and great. It cannot be disputed that a railroad is a public corporation, and its business pertains to and greatly affects the public, and that it is of a public nature. The company may not charge unreasonable prices for transportation, nor can it make unjust discriminations, nor select its patrons, nor go out of business when it chooses, while a mere trading or manufacturing company may do all these things. ”

“ Besides their receipts from freight and passenger traffic, railroads derive revenue also from the transportation of mails and express freight on passenger trains, from the sleeping-car companies, and from news companies for the privilege of selling upon trains. ”

“ If persons or companies owning rolling stock shall advance freight or passenger rates beyond maximum, or reduce them below minimum, rates, fixed by the directors of the Railway Company, they will lose their right to run trains, and if a combination should be made to diminish facilities to shippers or travelers, then the Roadbed Company will itself place a freight and passenger service on the track. ”

“ The third great agency, that of the carrier, has for forty years struggled to create a good transportation machine, much of the time without helpful support from either the public or the Government, and of late years in the face of restrictive and harassing legislation. That the business has succeeded to the extent that it has, has been due to the wonderful growth of the United States, which has carried forward all classes of business to a fair, and in some cases a high, degree of prosperity. ”

“ The second is that most manufacturers can warehouse their product, hold for rising prices, and sell at some future time. The railroad cannot do this. It must have ample transportation ready at any given time and place, and if it is not used then and there it is lost, not only to the railroad, but to the consumer. The manufacturer of transportation must always be ready to furnish the maximum amount of transportation for the use of the American people. ”

“ Frequently a railroad as a plant is adequate to manufacture more transportation than it can sell. The other fellow is getting too much of the competitive business. Investigation often shows that railroad solicitors can sell a shipper no freight or passenger transportation, because his salesman receives no orders from the railroad’s purchasing agent. ”

“ Prompt loading and unloading of freight-cars is one way in which owners of freight can conserve railway service and in the long run help themselves.
The conservation of railway service has yet larger aspects. The moving of a freight-car from the place of shipment to its destination is the duty of the railway company, but it cannot perform that duty without adequate facilities. ”

“ It is the task of the transportation system to carry commodities from points of production to consuming centers throughout the United States and to the ports for export. The more freely and cheaply the products are carried, the more competition there will be, the more production there will be, and the better will our transportation system serve our national economy. ”

“ All that mode of transportation has grown up in this country within the last sixty years, but the express companies carrying their small packages from state to state are just as certainly engaged in interstate commerce as the old-fashioned lumber wagons carrying commodities between the same places. ”

“ The railroad and pipe-line companies are common carriers of freight for all persons, are bound to receive it when offered at convenient and usual places, and to transport it for all, for reasonable compensation, without unreasonable discrimination in favour of any. ”

“ The goods shipped are sent in express cars attached to passenger trains or on special express trains maintaining the speed of passenger trains. Because of the speedy transportation thus afforded, merchandise large enough to be sent as freight, such as machinery and live stock, is often forwarded by express; but by far the greater part of express traffic in normal times is composed of articles weighing less than one hundred pounds. The larger companies conduct their activities in foreign lands as well as in the United States ”

“ The motor trucks transport less than carload lots of freight in complete coordination with the rail service. The railroad instituted this additional method of transportation in order to furnish an improved and more convenient freight service to the public in certain areas of light traffic and in order to curtail car mileage and way-freight service. Motor vehicle transportation, in other words, is merely a new method of carrying on part of its all-rail freight business in which it had been engaged for many years. ”