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Show Public Service Commission Enters yintah Basin Freight Rate Dispute A freight rate hearing, involving involv-ing the Uintah Basin, and growing grow-ing out of the nine year failure i of the Utah Public Service Com-! Com-! mission to consider rate standardization stan-dardization for the area, was terminated at Roosevelt, Wednesday Wed-nesday afternoon, under the usual us-ual tranquil atmosphere usually surrounding such events. But with all its outward serenity, the hearing, nevertheless, lost none of its importance, insofar as it affects the people of the Uintah .Basin. 1 It was in 1938 that the Utah Public Service Commission standardized stan-dardized truck freight rates for both common carriers and contract con-tract carriers throughout the state, with one exception the commission forgot the Uintah Basin. And during the intervening interven-ing years the controversy rcach-1 rcach-1 ed the boiling point between the single common carrier serving the Basin, the Sterling Transportation Transpor-tation Company, now the Uintah Freight Line, and the area's several sev-eral odd contract carriers. Charges and counter charges of exhorbitant rates, cut rates, and unfair practices passed between be-tween the contract carriers and the common carrier. ' Having forgotten the Uintah Basin as a part of Utah in 1938 when it standardized intra-state truck freight rates, the Utah Public Service Commission,, unable un-able to further disregard the growing antagonism between the common and contract carriers, instituted the hearing which was concluded at Roosevelt, Wednesday. The first introduction of evidence evi-dence in the controversial Uintah Basin freight rate dispute was scheduled for Salt Lake, but later transferred to Vernal, where the hearing opened on March 6. As outlined by Public Service Commissioner Don Hacking, who conducted the hearings at Roosevelt and Vernal, the investigation inves-tigation was inaugurated by the Public Service Commission to determine the adequacy or inadequacy in-adequacy of freight rates of all carriers operating in the Uintah Basin. The inadequacy of existing freight rates, the adjustment of which was forgotten in 1933, appears ap-pears to stem from the fact that the common carrier freight rates and those of the contract carriers are at such a variance as to have created the Gargantuan question of what arc just freight rates for both types of carriers serving serv-ing the Uintah Basin. Commissioner Hacking termed term-ed the existing condition a detriment det-riment to the business men, and to the economy of the Uintah Basin. He stated further that rates by which the common carrier car-rier can operate profitably will have to be established, and that contract carriers will necessarily necessar-ily have to be regulated in order to bring about a basis for fair competitive operations for all freight carriers. After all evidence of the Uintah Uin-tah Basin hearings has been reviewed re-viewed by the rate experts of the Public Service Commission, the Commission will then determine deter-mine what adjustments afe necessary, nec-essary, and rule accordingly. Adjusted truck freight rates, according to Commissioner Hacking Hack-ing will be based on the service rendered by the carriers, the distances they haul, their respective respec-tive investments in equipment, payrolls, and what will constitute consti-tute a profitable return to the operators on their iryestments. |