In transfer freight the scheme, briefly stated, is this. A box-car, filled with less-than-car-load stuff, all bound for different roads south of the Ohio, comes rolling down from Pittsburg into the Panhandle freight-house, there at the east end of the Cincinnati congested district. The freight-house crews make quick work of unloading it. The package stuff which it held goes rolling across the deck of the “in-house” and without rehandling into one of two or three of a row of huge packing-boxes that stand awaiting it. These look like the small goods-wagons of the French or the English railways and are in reality the new type of standardized red and gray motor-bodies of the Motor Terminals Co. One is destined for the freight-house of the main division of the L. & N., another for the Kentucky Central division of the same system, a third for the Queen and Crescent. An average of four and a half tons is stowed away in each of them, the way-bills are placed in an envelope for the driver, and the box is then fastened and sealed like the door of a regular box-car in service. The freight-house boss moves toward his telephone. Presto! A motor-chassis pulls alongside the Panhandle freight house.
“Ready for the Queen & Crescent,” the driver shouts cheerily in.
But before he receives his loaded box and the way-bills there is one to be delivered. An overhead crane running upon a track grabs the box, swings it clear of the chassis, and places it upon one side of the freight-house deck. From the other it picks up the loaded box for the Queen & Crescent and—almost as quickly as it can be told here—deposits it upon the emptied chassis. The driver yells a good-by and the truck is off, to be replaced almost instantly with another, with a transfer load to be delivered and one to be taken on for one of the other freight-houses.
“Our despatcher allows five minutes to unload a body and to load on another,” says Mr. Schultz. “It’s a lot more than sufficient time.”
“What despatcher?” we ask Mr. Schultz.
He explains in some detail. The railroads, who keep a careful supervising oversight of the workings of the plan, have installed at their own expense a skilled train-despatcher who, at a desk and telephone switchboard in a quiet downtown corner, directs the exact operations of each of the terminal company’s trucks. Through his direct telephone lines to each freight-house and sub-station he keeps tab upon the comings and the goings of the drivers, as well as a complete and permanent record of their work and can quickly meet emergencies of every sort, instantly adjusting the service to the needs that are thrust upon it. Time is money. And time counts.
“We are handling this stuff across town to the Queen and Crescent in just fourteen minutes to the average,” explains Mr. Schultz. “And here is where the average was two days and fourteen hours—the actual practice often from eight to ten days. Some percentage of gain.”
A seemingly incredible percentage, Mr. Schultz. Yet here are the records before our eyes that prove the statement. He seems to know exactly what he is talking about:
“Take that run from the Brighton sub-station down to the main freight-house of the Big Four in the old days,” he adds. “Second night out from the main station in a through L. C. L. car—in theory only. Do you know what it took them in average practice with that trap-car? An average of thirty-six hours; that’s according to the records. And our motor-trucks make that run in thirty minutes. But because they haul an average load of but 4.37 tons, as against an average load of nine tons in the trap-car, we must, in order to be entirely fair, take that into consideration in a comparative reckoning and say that our average haul is one hour and four minutes, which still compares pretty well with thirty-six hours. Or, to bring it still further, the average time to haul one ton of package-freight by motor-truck is seven minutes, as compared with three hours and fifty-four minutes by trap-car. Our drivers are scheduled to make ten miles an hour through the city streets, and they make it easily and without danger or annoyance to any one.
“There is another factor of saving in this service that you must not forget,” continues Mr. Schultz. “By our use of the motor-truck we have saved the use of twenty-three trap-cars a day in this one freight-house alone. That not only releases those cars to the Pennsylvania railroad for line service but, by saving the platform trackage which these cars demanded, increases in a really great measure the capacity and efficiency of this freight-house. And you can readily understand the effect upon the entire Cincinnati terminal situation when I tell you that the motor-truck service which we already have in effect is releasing a total of 66,000 box-cars a year from Cincinnati terminal service for the line movements of the various railroads that lead in here.”