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Suggestions that the inspiration for this move might have originated with New York Central were vastly annoying to U. S. Freight's President Frederic N. Melius, who rumbled: "Universal Carloading ... is simply a shipper of merchandise freight. It changes its routings on freight from one road to another to suit its own conditions and conveniences. No railroad has anything to do with determining such changes."
Technically Mr. Melius was correct but the circumstantial evidence was against him. The I. C. C. had the word of a Baltimore & Ohio man that a New York Central vice president had telephoned him to threaten that Universal would surely shift its patronage if B. & O. made an alliance with the Keeshin truck lines. The B. & O. continued to discuss that alliance, whereupon Universal started to route over Pennsylvania.
While Pennsylvania is the traditional Central rival, the two roads stood shoulder to shoulder on the question of the 2¢-per-mile passenger fare, regarding B. & O.'s support of the rate reduction as nothing less than traitorous. New York Central's objection to B. & O.'s hookup with Keeshin was founded on sound competitive sentiments. It can provide B. & 0. with what amounts to an established store-door pickup-delivery system, a service New York Central is not ready to offer. Furthermore New York Central has a heavy stake in a service which provides shippers with big steel boxes that can be loaded on flat cars. B. & O. could go that one better by running a Keeshin trailer on flat cars, running it off at its destination to be attached to a Keeshin truck tractor.
An optimist by profession if not conviction, B. & O.'s Daniel Willard viewed the pressure from New York Central as definitely "constructive," observing last week: "Where competition ceased, civilization ceased."