HANDLING GOODS

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 83, 5 October 1922, Page 5

HANDLING GOODS

10 lIS EDITOR.

Sir, —It seems to me that the General Manager of our Railways was making a kind of counter-charge to the complaint of the New Plymouth Mail Train deputation, when he said : "The difficulty over goods sorting was due principally to the practice of merchants receiving importations in bulk, which arrived from the port by truckloads. IJhen, while the goods were in the station, they presented batches of consignment notes cutting up the consignment into a dozen lots, while further subdivisions were made by others to whom goods were sold!. Proper practice followed everywhere else was for delivery of the original consignment to be taken and lots divided in store. He was seriously considering stopping the present practice." I am not interested in New Plymouth's railway service further than that service is part of New Zealand's service, for which we all pay. In the first place, I would like to congratulate the New Plymouth traders on having induced the railway management to help them distribute their goods in the most economical way, instead of by the wasteful method of carting goods into store to cart back again to the railway. I would urge the traders throughout the Dominion, to profit by the Taranaki practice as revealed by the General Manager, and insist upon the same system being made available everywhere. The whole people will profit by cutting out the double cartage and second handling, while the extra cost at the railway will be a' comparative bagatelle. It is the same people who make the big saving, on the handling of their, goods, that make good the trifling loss, if any, at the' railway station.—l am, etc., EFFICIENCY.