TRUCK SHORTAGE AGAIN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 13691, 6 March 1908, Page 4

TRUCK SHORTAGE AGAIN.

Owing to the failure of the Railway Department to maintain a plant on the Auckland system adequate for ordinary requirements the Taupiri coal miners are working short time and Auckland industries are short of coal. It will be remembered that Sir Joseph Ward recently claimed that the coal mining companies ought to provide their own trucks, but by the same reasoning the dairy and meat companies should provide their own cars and farmers their own waggons and cattle trucks. The supply of coal trucks is so usually short of the demand that this important industry is kept in a continual state of unrest and the progress -of the community is seriously hampered. Miners lose wages and companies revenue, while dependent industries and the public generally are perpetually being inconvenienced. And whenever this happens the railway loses the earnings it could make without an effort had it ample rolling stock for requirements. Last winter householders were greatly affected by the inability of the provincial mines to get their coal to market, nor are the prospects for the coming winter any brighter unless the Government takes steps to adequately equip its railways. For during the summer months there is a comparatively small demand for household coal, yet we have in the middle of our hottest weather the old difficulty with the coal supply. The situation calls for the prompt and personal attention of the Minister for Railways, who, instead of attempting to shuffle responsibility or to the shoulders of the mining companies, ought to try to accommodate railway customers and to increase railway earnings by providing a plant sufficient for the industrial demands of the district. Until this is done, there will be constantly recurring complaints of truck-short-age and corresponding losses of railway revenue. Which ought not to be upon what Sir Joseph Ward endeavours to convince us are the best managed railways in the wide world.