With the large wholesale and retail houses the use of the road motor is a matter not simply of economy in transport but, to a still greater degree, of doing a larger business, in less time, and over a wider area, than if horsed vehicles were used.

When urban traders send motor-vehicles a distance of over twenty or even thirty miles into the outer suburbs, and when those vehicles can cover from fifty to sixty miles in a day, distributing fresh supplies to suburban or country shopkeepers, delivering purchases to local residents, or calling on them to leave groceries, meat and other household necessaries, the possibilities of an expansion of business by the said traders are greatly increased, more especially when the local residents within the radius in question find that if they give an order to the van-man, or send it by post one day, the motor-vehicle will generally supply their wants the next day or the day following. Under this arrangement the big traders, or the big stores, in town are enabled to make their already big businesses bigger still—to their own advantage, but with a corresponding disadvantage to the local shopkeepers.

In another direction the commercial motor is assisting the operations of trading companies, caterers, grocers, tea-dealers, tobacconists, etc., who, instead of having a single huge block of departmental shops or stores, have numerous branches in all parts of London, furnishing them with viands, provisions or stock from a head depôt. In all such instances as these,—more especially when cooked food is distributed from a central kitchen,—the superiority of the motor-vehicle over the horsed van is self-evident; while the further advantage is gained that the branch establishments can be devoted wholly, or almost exclusively, to the serving of customers, without any need for extensive kitchen arrangements or store-rooms of their own. Alternatively, the premises used for these branches need be no larger than is necessary to meet day-by-day requirements, whereas an independent trader, having only a single establishment, would want much more accommodation, involving higher rent, rates, taxes and expenses generally.

Once more the gain is on the part of the big trader as against the small one; and once more we have evidence of the increasing tendency for the former to supersede the latter. In fact, the real competition to-day is no longer between large traders and small traders. It is a competition between the commercial giants themselves. It is a contest in which the small shopkeeper is little better than an interested spectator, with nothing more to hope for than that the particular giant who wipes out his business will, at least, be so far considerate as to offer him a situation.

In the recesses of Wild Wales there has been seen a commercial motor-vehicle which was virtually a shop or a general stores on wheels—something after the style of the familiar gypsies' van, though of a far superior type. There are evidently endless possibilities in this direction. The time may come when it will not be necessary for the rural resident to go to the shops in even the nearest town. The shops themselves—or equivalents thereto—will be brought to the very door. To a certain extent there will thus be a reversal to the habits of former days; but between the packhorse, or the pedlar, and the motor-shop-on-wheels there will be a distinct and a very wide difference, representing generations of both scientific and economic progress. Do not such possibilities still further suggest, also, the eventual supersession of the small trader by the large one?

In almost every class of trade or business the commercial motor is being steadily substituted for horsed vehicles. There are large retail houses in London which have each their "fleets" of up to fifty or sixty motor-vans or lorries.[[65]] The carrying companies would hardly be able to provide their extensive suburban services of to-day without road motors. Fishmongers, ice merchants and fruit salesmen, who especially require to have a speedy means of distributing their wares, favour the commercial motor no less than do the managers of evening newspapers. Laundry companies—to whose business a great impetus has been given of late years by the increasing resort to residential flats—find commercial motors of great service in the collections that have to be made on Mondays and Tuesdays and the deliveries effected on Fridays and Saturdays. Furniture-removers, by resorting either, for small removals, to motors carrying pantechnicons, or, for large removals, to traction-engines and regular road trains, can now cover distances of up to 100 or 150 miles a day, the "record" down to the autumn of 1911 being 166 miles in a day. Brewers, mineral-water manufacturers, oil companies, coal merchants, pianoforte-makers, brick-makers and scores of other traders, besides, are all taking to the new form of street or road transport.

Motor-vehicles are likewise succeeding horsed vehicles for fire-engines, municipal water-carts and dust-carts, street ambulances, Post Office mail-vans,[[66]] char-a-bancs and estate cars, the last-mentioned being constructed so that they can be used either for passengers or for goods. Theatrical companies on tour use motor-vehicles for the conveyance of themselves, plus belongings and scenery. Political propagandists, also on tour, move in their motor-van from one village to another with an ease that no other road vehicle could surpass. Religious missions are being sent out in motor-vans fitted up as chapels, and duly dedicated to their special purpose. Finally, after having had, through life, the advantage of all the numerous and varied motor services here mentioned, one may now be conveyed to one's last resting-place in what a writer in "Motor Traction" for June 24, 1911, describes as "a properly-equipped motor hearse."

So considerable is the expansion which the use of commercial motors has undergone, and so great and varied are the interests represented, that there is now a Commercial Motor Users' Association which, among other purposes, seeks to resist the placing of undue restrictions on users, and to extend their rights and privileges. The administration of the Association is vested in an executive committee (on which the principal industries using self-propelled vehicles for industrial purposes are represented) and various sub-committees.

Of the motor-omnibus as a competitor with the electric tramway I have spoken in the previous chapter. It is a no less serious competitor with the horse omnibus which in London, at least, if not in other cities as well, it is rapidly driving off the streets altogether. The position in London is suggested by the following figures, which give the numbers of horse-omnibuses and motor-omnibuses licensed in the years stated:—

YEAR.HORSE.MOTOR.YEAR.HORSE.MOTOR.
19023736010190729640783
19033667029190825571205
19043623013190921551133
19053551031191017711180
190634842411911[[67]]08631665