PARCELS CARRIAGE RATES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22835, 20 March 1936, Page 15

PARCELS CARRIAGE RATES

TO THE EDITOR. Sib, —Your correspondent "Parcels” in this morning’s Daily Times opens up a vexed question which we hope abler pens than ours will discuss. The present cutting of rates by the Post Office is one of the most ridiculous forms of pricecutting introduced into this country, bio wonder the railways are losing money when we have the Post Office, which is supposed to be a paying proposition, beating the railways for their own legitimate traffic. The Post Office, we understand, has a contract with the railways to cart all its parcels and mail matter. It has the advantage of a very expensive form of transit, namely, the express trains at a very low annual rental. Now that the Post Office has cut these rates it is actually taking the traffic from the Railways Department and from the recognised forwarding agents of Dunedin, who give a service second to none for the conveyance of parcels and goods and pay the railways thousands of pounds per annum. The forwarding agents are now faced with an increase in drivers wages, a reduction in hours to the 40-hour week, and yet the Post Office without any beg pardons” can come in and cut the rates 00 to 100 per cent, on a pretence that road transport is beating it for tins traffic. Do you think, for instance, that road transport has ever controlled the P business between the North and South Island? 4 ' Perhaps it may be that the Government intends to embark upon a price-cutting war to eliminate private enterprise. We are, Sir, ourselves paying the railways some £IO,OOO per year, and we hope that its management will have a voice in this anomaly.—We are, etc Private Enterprise.