FIREWOOD AND TIMBER TEADE;

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 11124, 17 January 1899, Page 3

FIREWOOD AND TIMBER TEADE;

THE GEEAT WANT OF TRUCKS. [bush correspondent.] Our firewood and timber merchants are a class deserving of ths sympathy of all members of the coiiimunity. For liioiiths they have had reason to complain of the scandalous way in which they are treated by the Bailway Department in respect to the supply of empty trucks. Before the wool season this wa3 tho case, and whi,te pilie Bhiprtierits! I'ightly op wrongly, received tie blame. During the wool season this industry received the credit of the shortage, and in both cases those interested submitted aa cheerfully as they could. Now the strain of both has abated, and yet yesterday there was not a spare truck between here ftnd. Nawev. 'CrucVs ordered by wO ; e ft>t fcli'6 siUcutioti or 1 pressing demands as long as five days ago are still being waited for. The reason none can divine. Loaded trucks have to wait for days at a time before they are taken away, and still tte Department, with characteristic . indiierence . or, culpable ea^elewheaV. fiirpisfie'i nb raas.on for these strange proceedings. Kepresentfttions to the management are simply a waste of time, beingentirely without effect. Dealers have fumed and expostulateduntil they are tired, and the next step they take will perhaps bring tho management of this, the worst administered public department in the colony, to a right sense of its duties and the important obligations devolving upon the department as the trustees of the property, of the New Zealand taxpayer. The aid of a number of members of the, House' is to be sought in the obtaining of i'odr'ess' ot this ever-; lasting grievauce, whose continuance there is nothing whatever to warrant, and there is . every probability of the whole matter being fully gone into when the House meets. The result, I should imagine, will be anything out creditable to the Administration. , A private individual wio conducted his affairs so loosely would soon, find he had no business to do ; people would give more satisfactory traders and firms the preference, and would go where they could get their wants attended to. And is it reasonable to suppose that the public will tolerate in a Government department what they would not suffer at the hands of private individuals? Why in the name of common sense does not the department secure better rolling atock, or more trucks ? Or why does it not run extra goods trains ? It would avdid the vexation and losses consequent upon the present muddled state of things, and the taxpayers would be getting what they have every right to demand — a proper leturn for the money they have invested m developing the resources of the country.