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Re:RE: (erielack) REA Express



Thanks, Randy. This raises additional questions. What other trucking
companies would operate as contract carriers? I imagine it might be easier
for specialty carriers such as tank and flatbed truckers, with a more
limited customer base. I wonder how this would work for a parcel carrier,
with an almost unlimited customer base and potential destinations? Wouldn't
this also preclude directly serving the public?

Paul B

 

Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:21:16 EDT

From: "Janet & Randy Brown" <jananran_@_mymailstation.com>

Subject: Re:RE: (erielack) REA Express

 

I am going to try to remember by going back more than 40 years to when I was
studying to become an ICC Practitioner.  Contract carriers differed from
common carriers mainly in that they didn't hold themselves available to the
general public, only to their contractors.  As such, their tariff
requirements were much simpler:  they had to file only for stipulated cargo
which the contractor shipped between stipulated origins and destinations.
While they could not solicit general traffic, neither did they face much
competition.  The whole structure was much tighter, making expense and
revenue forecasting -- and, therefore, budgetting -- much easier.

 

They faced the same requirement for a Certificate of Public Convenience and
Necessity as did a common carrier and, of course, all the safety and
operating rules, as well as weight limitations, still applied.  Operation in
an ICC-established "commercial zone" around a metropolitan center relieved
common and contract carriers only of the need to meet permitting and tariff
requirements.

 

By the way -- the ICC did not decree rates.  They adjudicated them. When
somebody (seldom the ICC itself) complained, the ICC evaluated proposed or
contested rates by considering a fairly vast array of data including (but
not limited to) operating costs and competitive effects both on other
carriers and on other shippers, as well as the general public.  Their main
function was to guarantee the absence of self-destructive predatory
practices among carriers and between carriers and shippers.

 

Books have been written explaining further and in greater detail.

 

Randy Brown 

  



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