An ideal receptacle of this sort would be built of fiber or of steel—better still, a combination of the two. Such a container would roughly approximate in size the body of a small motor truck. Two of them would fit comfortably upon the chassis of a large truck—three or four, upon the frame of an electric car—for either city or interurban use. The regulation freight car of the steam railroad would then consist of trucks and frame—builded to receive from five to seven of the standard containers. These containers would also be able to fit in the low hold decks of a steamship with a great economy of room and therefore with a great efficiency of service.
The manufacturer then would load the containers in his shipping room. Some of them destined through under seal to large cities, such as New York or Chicago or Philadelphia; others, carrying a variety of products to small places, would be addressed to recognized transfer or assorting points. This last method would be exactly similar to that employed by the post-office department or the express companies in handling their daily flood tides of small parcel traffic. The use of the universal container would be directed more particularly, however, to heavier freight, both in individual packages and in bulk. Coal or grain or lumber would hardly be sent in a container. It might be possible, however, to ship flour and sugar in the universal container, and entirely without the expense of wrappings.
From the manufacturer’s door—whether it were at street level, or in a community industrial building fifteen floors above the street—the container would go to the railroad frame car. By use of small-wheeled trucks or overhead tractors it would be carried first to the waiting chassis of the motor truck—in case the manufacturer was not able to command railroad siding facilities for himself. The motor truck would carry it to the freight terminal—overhead crane would make short shift of loading the container and its fellows upon the frame car.
The rest of the journey would be that of ordinary freight, save that at the destination the shipping process would be exactly reversed—the motor truck performing its part of the work again, if necessary, and the container going direct to the merchant or manufacturer with the least possible delay and with no expensive intermediate handlings, with their consequent labor expense as well as the possible danger from breakage.
This idea is not chimerical. Also, it is not inexpensive. It requires much study to work out the details and when these have been brought into practicability it would require much money for the initial investment in containers. They would have to be built in large quantities, in order to justify the large immediate expense to adapt any number of freight cars, terminals, and warehouses to their use. But as to their efficiency and their ultimate economy, few transportation men who have given much real thought to the subject, are in doubt.
Such schemes quickly ally themselves with the entire problem of terminals.
“Terminals?” you say, and immediately think of what we were discussing a few minutes ago—the Grand Central station and other monumental structures of its sort. But those were passenger terminals. And now we have come to the great opportunities to be found in the handling and the development of the freight.
Perhaps you are not impressed with the importance of freight terminals. They are not the impressive gateways of large cities; but in many, many senses they are the most important. Through them pour the foodstuffs—the meats, the fish, the vegetables, the fruits, the milk, the clothing, the fuel, the thousand and one things, necessary for the comfort of man and his luxury. Bar those gateways but for a single day and then see the panic that would overcome your city.
While we were speaking of the new Grand Central station and the important step it typified in the economic and efficient progress of our country, we called attention to the allied facilities that were springing up roundabout it—hotels, clubs, office buildings, auditorium, all of them more or less closely affiliated with the business of the great north gate of a metropolitan city. Is there any reason why the freight gateways should not be the housing places of affiliated industries—industries, if you please, more or less dependent upon the rapid movement of either their raw material or their finished products? Suppose that the railroads were ever to seek out and solve that fascinating problem of the universal unit container. Would not the most fortunate manufacturer be he whose shipping room, his entire modern and concentrated factory as well, was so close to a comprehensive freight terminal as to permit the handling of his containers, his other freight too, by means of chutes or elevators—with even the motor truck, to say nothing of less modern forms of city truckage, entirely eliminated?