Trucks,Trains,and Bureaucrats-the Crisis in Transportation

Locklin D. Philip , Economics of Transportation (5th ed., Homewood: Richard D. Irwin, 1960), pp. 231–232. As early as 1893 the ICC requested minimum rate control power.

Sections 206(a) and 216(e) of the Interstate Commerce Act.

These arguments are summarized in Wilson G. L. , Transportation and Communication (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1954), p. 495.

Meyer J. R. Peck M. J. Stenason J. Zwick C. , The Economics of Competition in the Transportation Industries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 216. The authors note that it is somewhat more difficult to enter the trucking business now than in the 1930's; perhaps a few trucks and twenty employees represent the economically minimal firm. But this would represent a very small initial investment for a firm by American standards.

A gray-area operation is one that attempts to conform to the letter but not the spirit of the law. A trucker may take legal title to the goods he carries while in transit, thus becoming a private carrier, free from rate and entry controls. Such carriage can be usually proven in the courts to be illegal—although the offending carrier must be caught before he can be punished. Enforcement difficulties in the trucking industry have always been enormous, given the tens of thousands of firms subject to regulation.

Hilton George W. Due J. F. , The Electric Interurban Railways in America (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959), pp. 234–237.

The complex history of the minimum rate fight between railroads and truckers is summarized in National Transportation Policy: Preliminary Draft of a Report for the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, United States Senate (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1961), pp. 385–440.

But actual receipts per ton mile only rose by about 50 per cent, reflecting the shift from higher-rated commodities by shippers. See Nelson James , Railroad Transportation and Public Policy (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1959), pp. 337–344, and Interstate Commerce Commission Activities, 1937–1962 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1962), p. 149.

Interstate Commerce Commission Activities, 1937–1962, op. cit., p. 148. The rapid growth of the total transportation market meant that railroads actually gained absolutely, handling about 361 billion ton miles in 1937 as compared to 576 billion ton miles in 1960. Railroad traffic has declined slightly from the absolute peak reached in 1944.

National Transportation Policy, op. cit., p. 49 and p. 408.

This shipper attitude is well expressed by Albert Nickerson in “The Right of Private Carriage,” a speech presented to the Division of Transportation Session of the Forty-First Annual Meeting of the American Petroleum Institute, 1961.

A Review of Railway Operations in 1960 (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Railroads, 1961), p. 26.

Interstate Commerce Commission Activities, 1937–1962, op. cit., p. 152. The data are for Class I motor carriers of property only. These lines earned only 0.8 per cent on sales.

United States Interstate Commerce Commission, Report for the year 1960–1961 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1961), p. 43.

National Transportation Policy, op. cit., pp. 507–547.

A summary of President Kennedy's recommendations appeared in the Wall Street Journal, April 6, 1962.

Jacobs Jane , The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York: Random House, 1961), pp. 190–192.