Ending rate discrimination in the railroad industry
At mid-century, southern governors banded together to end railroads operators' practice of charging more for transportation to and among southern destinations. Rate parity helped bring railroads south and contributed to the growth of the southern textile industry, Outlaw explains.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with John Thomas Outlaw, June 5, 1980. Interview H-0277. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
Let me ask a question that shows more my lack of knowledge about the
industry than anything else. In the railroad industry, there are these
old issues about freight rates and basing points and advantages which
certain cities … Say, even within the South, Atlanta got a
certain sort of an advantage, and then Charlotte got some basing point
kind of advantage. Is there a similar thing in the trucking, where a
particular city might be given a little special favor or, because of the
way that the rate structure developed, certain cities became the centers
for the trucking industry more than others would
in North and South Carolina?
- JOHN THOMAS OUTLAW:
-
Now you cannot discriminate. Back in the early days when the railroads
were in their heyday, so to speak, and to protect the large movements of
freight up in the New England areas, they had preferential rates for
that part of the country. And they were higher down this way, as I
mentioned earlier, but not quite in this manner. It was 1947, I believe,
it was, or in that vicinity, that the southern governors got together
and sued the railroads, and the courts ruled that they could not
discriminate, therefore, in the future. Rates would be the same in both
areas. But for a long time they had had these differential rates that
were very preferable [preferential] to the Northeast. After that was
done, that's when the textile industry moved south and began
to grow and to flourish as we have it today.
- ALLEN TULLOS:
-
Would there have been anything like that at all in the trucking industry
earlier()?
- JOHN THOMAS OUTLAW:
-
No, because after the Truck Act of 1935, whatever the
carriers' rate was on different brackets, like from ten-mile
brackets on up to 500 miles or 1,000 miles, any shipper that was moving
anything in any of those brackets would have the same rate. Now the
carriers can have a different rate in there, but that carrier cannot
show any preferential treatment or give anything to one shipper that
they would not give to the other, any preference of any kind.