Fighting the Squeeze

Critical September and October, when the railroads will face their traffic peak, drew a bit nearer last week. And the U.S. transportation system tried to prepare:

> A.A.R. announced that railroads (as of June 1) had 65,000 freight cars and 517 locomotives on order, highest since 1924.

> Pennsylvania Railroad ordered 150,000 tons of rails, 6,020 freight cars. Atlantic Coast Line ordered 2,900 cars; New York Central sought funds for 5,000.

> Equipment trust issues totaled $147,445,000 for the first half of 1941, compared to $177,680,000 for all of 1937.

> OPM confirmed an A-3 priorities rating for 60 car builders, putting freight cars on a par with ships, among defense necessities.

> ICC Chairman Joe Eastman, addressing the National Association of Shippers Advisory Boards in Chicago, urged shippers to use the railroads as sparingly as possible. "If a barge will do the trick, use the barge," cried he, "if a truck will do the trick, use the truck."

> The expected East Coast oil shortage, due to the diversion of oil tankers to Britain, is one transport trouble which nobody blames on a car shortage. Last week A.A.R. offered a neat statistic: of the 150,000 U.S. tank cars, over 130,000 are owned or leased by shippers (mainly oil & chemical companies), and some 19,000 of them are idle. Nineteen thousand tank cars, they figured, could handle 6,000,000 bbl. a month, though at several times tanker cost (estimated East Coast oil deficiency for 1941: 50,000,000 bbl.). Many an Eastern commuter had seen idle cars on sidings. Their lessors pointed out that there was always a surplus of tank cars at this time of year, waiting for the normal summer rush. If the oil & chemical companies had a comfortable car margin, they were luckier--or more farsighted--than most shippers.

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