Congressman OREN G. HARRIS, LEPHIEW GIN CO., Dermott, Ark., July 23, 1962. Chairman, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, DEAR CONGRESSMAN HARRIS: We are interested in the proposed transportation legislation now pending in Congress-Senate bill 3243 and House bill 11583, generally called the minimum rate bills. As these bills will have an ultimate effect on our business, we feel that a favorable enactment of such will be desirable for agricultural products in our business, as well as the public, through lower rates for transportation services, also a good effect on bulk commodities. Therefore, we sincerely ask that you give these two bills a very serious consideration, with the hope that you will find it desirable to give your support to them. It is our wish that this letter be made a part of the official record in the proceedings on the bills. Thank you for your interest and efforts in such matters. Re H.R. 11583. Representative OREN HARRIS, R. H. DENNINGTON. PUGH & CO., Portland, Ark., July 26, 1962. Chairman, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, DEAR OREN: Your committee should be considering the above House bill shortly, and we, as shippers, feel that your support should be given to its passage. Your familiarity with operations such as ours, where we receive, by rail, large quantities of fertilizer from various manufacturers, from New Mexico potash mines, and from Lake Charles, where boats tie up, with Chilean nitrate, and we ship our commodities by rail, including cotton, cotton seed, soy beans, rice, and occasionally livestock, naturally make us most interested in the passage of this bill. I hope that our thinking corresponds with yours in this respect and we do want your support. May I ask that you make this letter a part of the official record in the proceedings on this bill. With kindest personal regards and best wishes, I am, Sincerely yours, R. B. NEWCOME. ADCOCK SEED & ELEVATOR CO., McGehee, Ark., July 25, 1962. Congressman OREN G. HARRIS, Chairman, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, HON. OREN G. HARRIS: As an elevator operator and grain buyer, I write urging your support of House bill H.R. 11583. Since I ship grain exclusively by rail, I am greatly concerned with better service and reduced freight rates. I therefore object to discriminatory regulations against the railroads and am in favor of any legislation which will relieve existing inequalities with other carriers and allow for more equal competition. I request that my letter be made a part of the official records in the proceedings on the bills. Sincerely yours, ROBERT H. ADCOCK. Congressman OREN G. HARRIS, HORSE-SHOE MILLS, INC., Chairman, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, HON. CONGRESSMAN: We are among the vast army of interstate shippers that believe the entire Interstate Commerce Act should be revised and brought up to date in keeping with the many changes that have taken place in interstate commerce and our entire transportation system since the original act was initiated. Most of the rules and regulations which, at the time they were put into effect, are about as far separated from today's needs as East is from West. Transportation is no longer a one-system business. It is and should be competitive as are all other business enterprises. You have before your committee House bill H.R. 11583, which will amend the Interstate Commerce Act to permit the railroads to meet some of the unfair competition now provided by trucks and water carriers. It will be appreciated if you will support this bill. We believe it to be a step in the right direction and will be beneficial to users of the railroads. Please make this letter a part of the official record in the proceedings on this bill. Yours truly, H. W. DAVIS, President. PLANTERS COTTON OIL MILL, INC., Representative OREN G. HARRIS, Chairman, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Washington, D.C. DEAR CONGRESSMAN HARRIS: The provisions of House bill 11583 involve some very basic principles that will permit the common carriers to compete where they cannot do so today. Passage of this bill is important to us and I hope that you will lend your full support to it. Please make this letter part of the official record in the proceedings on H.R. 11583. Yours very truly, Hon. OREN HARRIS, IRBY W. DUNKLIN, President. HIGGINS INDUSTRIES, INC., Chairman, House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, DEAR MR. HARRIS: This is to request your help in obtaining passage by the Congress this year of H.R. 11583 which we feel would be distinctly beneficial to our business and which is in the public interest. In his transportation message of April 5, 1962, the President pointed out the need for modernizing our transportation policy which has not been changed in many respects since the time when railroads had a virtual monopoly. One of the points made by the President had to do with the inequity of regulating minimum rates on bulk commodities, agricultural and fishery products, and passengers handled by some common carriers while other competing carriers are exempted from such regulation. The bill we have mentioned offers a reasonable remedy for that inequity and we believe the relief should be given promptly. We are personally interested because of the way this legislation would apply to the operations of our company. It is requested that this letter be made a part of your hearing record. Very truly yours, EDWIN PAUL CROZAT, Vice President, Sales. MIDDLETOWN, OHIO, July 30, 1962. Hon. PAUL F. SCHENCK, Representative to Congress, Washington, D.C. DEAR SIR: We the undersigned have been advised of the contents of House bill H.R. 11583 and are taking this opportunity to write to you to express our feelings toward it. If this measure is passed, it will greatly affect the livelihood of all of us who are engaged in driving in motor vehicle transportation. This bill is very detrimental to our interests and we, as your constituents, respectively request your wholehearted support in defeating this measure. Respectively yours, Wm. Algan, 216 North Clay Street, New Carlisle, Ohio; H. Baer, 106 Funston, New Carlisle, Ohio; V. Farris, 2213 Pearl Street, Middletown, Ohio; C. Swanson, Route No. 1, Tipp City, Ohio; Robt. Dickerson, Route No. 2, Caledonia, Ohio; Claude Sibert, 2358 Eastridge Drive, Hamilton, Ohio; Leroy Simons, Box 407, Middletown; J. Rose, Post Office Box 72, Excello, Ohio; Ben Forman, 512 Granada Avenue, Middletown, Ohio; Kendall Stomper, 36 East Philadelphia Street, Dayton, Ohio; Linya Cox, 79 Main Street, Miamisburg, Ohio; Ocio Bentley, 5173 Salem Road, Marion, Ohio; Lowell Rudd, Jeffersonville, Ohio. ADOBE BRICK & SUPPLY CO., West Palm Beach, Fla., August 8, 1962. HON. PAUL G. ROGERS, DEAR MR. ROGERS: We are most interested in the successful passage of Senate bills 3242 and 3243 and their House bill counterparts 11583 and 11584, which will improve the national transportation system as well as exempt our rail carriers from minimum rate regulation of the Interstate Commerce Committee. We believe that such legislation will be beneficial to the national transportation system and of aid to industry in general. We will greatly appreciate your vigorous support of these bills, inasmuch as rail services and costs are so vital to industry. We further request that this letter be made a part of the record in support of both bills. Respectfully yours, S. A. MAKSIK. COLONIAL REFRIGERATED TRANSPORTATION, INC., Subject: Proposal to eliminate minimum rate controls on bulk and on agricultural commodities. Hon. KENNETH A. ROBERTS, Congressman, U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, D.C. DEAR SIR: Bills to implement the recommendations in the President's transportation message to Congress are currently pending before both the House and the Senate (H.R. 11583 and H.R. 11584, and S. 3242 and S. 3243). I am writing on behalf of the trucking industry, as well as our own company, a member of the American Trucking Association and the Alabama Trucking Association. Two of the bills are a direct threat to the trucking industry, as well as to the general public, and should not be allowed to be passed. These two bills are House bill H.R. 11583 and the identical Senate bill S. 3243. Bills H.R. 11583 and S. 3243, as proposed, tend to twist the President's suggestion for "equal competitive opportunity." These two bills propose to remove the authority of the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate minimum rates on commodities in bulk and agricultural and fishery products. Today, commodities in bulk are exempt when shipped by water carriers and agricultural and fishery products are exempt when shipped by motor carrier. Taking into consideration the problems and rate wars as a result of the present exemptions, to further spread this disease does not cure it or give anyone equality. Further spreading of the exemption will only declare open season for the railroads to cut rates until all of their small competitors, who will not be protected by the antitrust laws as proposed in these bills, are destroyed. If this exemption is spread to the rail carriers they will have won a milestone in the direction to destroy the Interstate Commerce Commission's authority to regulate minimum rates and force many trucking companies, as well as many small industries, out of business because they could not compete with the depressed rates that will be established by the rail carriers. The Interstate Commerce Commission has prevented such unjust discrimination by its present authority and to strip them of their power to regulate rates would not be equality but would be the sorriest kind of inequality. In the hearings held for these bills only Government witnesses, such as Commerce Department, Justice Department, Agriculture Department, have been heard and they are uniformly in support of the measures. On September 4 or 5 the witnesses for the American Trucking Association will testify before the House Interstate and Foreign Commerce Committee, of which you are a committeeman, and it is respectfully requested that you be present when the ATA witnesses give their testimony. We are in favor of equality, and to establish equality it is our opinion that the exemption should be repealed rather than spread on to the rail carriers. The exemption of agricultural and fishery products to the motor carriers has by no means placed certificated carriers and so-called exempted carriers on an equal basis. The exempt carriers file no tariffs and when one of the certificated carriers try to compete and establish competitive rates, then, that moment, a new and lower level of exempt rates are established by the exempt carriers. Rate wars on the exempt commodities have depressed the income of common carriers so that it is a very rare occasion to find a certificated, perishable commodity, common carriers with an operating ratio below 95 percent. Our own company for the last 5 years has never operated below this figure and at times has been over 100 percent and is in no condition to reduce its rates any more. As you can plainly see, if this bill is allowed to be passed and the rail carriers are allowed to throw away the rulebooks and so as they please with as much financial backing as they have, they could ruin the trucking industry and by such a monopoly could, in turn, damage the public by making up for their losses by increasing the rates on regulated items. We trust that you will be present and listen to our witnesses, see our side of this injustice, go to bat for the people you represent and help stamp out exemption rather than spread it. Yours very truly, C. E. MCBRIDE, President. VIRGINIA STATE POULTRY FEDERATION, INC., Mr. W. E. WILLIAMSON, Clerk, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House Office Building, Washington, D.C. DEAR MR. WILLIAMSON: Thank you for your letter of August 24. I am enclosing for the record on H.R. 11583, a copy of an editorial which will appear in our September issue of the Virginia Poultryman, the official publication of the Virginia State Poultry Federation. This editorial, prepared for us by Mr. L. N. Conyers, states rather clearly our views on this measure. A resolution passed by the poultry federation regarding this bill also is enclosed and we would appreciate your also placing this in the record. Since it is now so late in the session and I am advised that there is little chance of getting action on the bill at this session, we will not plan to appear at the hearings this year. We will want to testify when the measure comes up for consideration at the next session, assuming that it will be reintroduced. Sincerely yours, Enclosures. J. PAUL WILLIAMS, Executive Secretary. GUEST EDITORIAL (By L. N. Conyers) EDITOR'S NOTE.-Mr. Conyers, a highly respected transportation consultant with the Virginia Department of Agriculture, kindly consented to prepare this editorial precisely expressing the views of the federation's freight rate committee and board of directors as well as his own considered judgment of the merits of transportation legislation proposed by President Kennedy as embodied in House bill H.R. 11583 and Senate bill S. 3243. We commend these companion bills to Virginia's congressional delegation and to the respective House and Senate committees currently considering them and urge their speedy approval by the Congress. Transportation, one of the most dynamic segments of the national economy, employing a sixth of our labor force and accounting for one-fifth of the gross national products, has been diagnosed by economic doctors as being on the verge of a nervous collapse. The remedy prescribed has been a complete financial transfusion. Pending in Congress at the present time is proposed transportation legislation that will afford greater equality of opportunity among carriers, encourage vigorous competition for traffic, and thus benefit users and the public through lower rates for transportation services. It will be especially helpful to Virginia and other agricultural interests. The bills are S. 3243 (in the Senate) and H.R. 11583 (in the House), and are known as minimum rate bills. These two identical legislative proposals are now the subject of hearings being conducted by the Senate Commerce Committee (Senator Warren G. Magnuson, chairman), and the House Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce (Representative Oren Harris, chairman). Designed to carry out important recommendations contained in the President's transportation message to Congress of April 5, 1962, they would extend to all carriers (including railroads) an exemption from regulatory control of the level of minimum rates on the transportation of agricultural and bulk commodities. Railroads today are severely handicapped in their competition with other modes of transportation. There are many reasons for this, but one of the principal ones is the existence-under present law-of what is considered a grossly discriminatory and inequitable regulatory situation. S. 3243 and H.R. 11583 are intended to provide a partial remedy for certain of the more glaring inequalities of existing regulations. The bills are directed, for the most part, to the highly uneven and unfair competition created by the so-called agricultural commodities exemption for motor carriers and the bulk commodity exemptions for water carriers. Under the present agricultural exemption numerous agricultural, horticultural and seafood commodities, aggregating vast tonnages, are exempt from economic (including rate) regulation when they move by truck, but are not so exempt when they move by rail. The railroads are similarly prejudiced in competing with water carriers for the movement of coal, iron ore, grain, petroleum and many other commodities that move in bulk free from regulation when waterborne, but are subject to full regulation on the rails. These exemptions from regulation that apply when the traffic described is transported by other modes of transportation, but not when moved by railroad, create gross discrimination against the railroads, and pose grave competitive difficulties for them. Specifically, for example, the railroads are required on this traffic, as on all traffic, to publish their charges, to observe them strictly and maintain them without change except on statutory notice to the public, and to meet various standards of reasonableness and nondiscrimination. Their competitors by highway or waterway, as the case may be, operate under no such requirements and are privileged to make whatever rates they choose at any time, without notice to anyone, on whatever basis is necessary to get the business. For railroads to meet all of the regulatory requirements to which they are subject and at the same time meet competition that is free from such requirements places them at a decided disadvantage. The pending bills would not equalize rate regulation between the railroads and their highway and waterway competitors, even as to agricultural and bulk |