Highways and Highway Transportation

by George R. Chatburn

Freight Traffic.

—When it comes to freight traffic cost and time will be the principal factors to determine the type of performance. The element of pleasure is here eliminated and only cold economical features remain. Already horse trucking is rapidly disappearing as it seems to be able to compete with the motor only where many stops are to be made. In large cities motor trucks are utilized to haul packages to certain districts at considerable distances from the store, where they are turned over to small wagons for delivery. Ice and milk are often distributed in the same manner, thus taking advantage of long rapid hauls upon fully loaded trucks and less expensive delivery wagons where many stops are to be made and smaller loads are to be carried. Even in delivery service some merchants have by carefully arranging and timing their routes brought the cost of delivery to below ten cents per parcel. All purchasers of goods at the store whether delivered or not should be interested in reducing this cost because usually in the accounting it is spread out over the entire turnover and charged to the expense of doing business. It may be possible that in a few years horses will be barred from the streets for sanitary reasons; then it will be necessary to use motors for all sorts of deliveries, possibly large ones for hauling to the distant districts and small ones for the house to house delivery in the district.

In very congested districts motor trucks are at a great disadvantage because they cannot be used at their most efficient speed. If the congestion can be eliminated or at least relieved by such means as one-way traffic, paving parallel streets, removing buildings which obstruct passage, widening driveways, elevating railroads and street cars, supplying overhead crossings, making subways, or by careful rearrangement and planning of terminal facilities, warehouses, and other accommodations, the cost of transportation in the large cities may be materially reduced. In many such cities public service commissions are studying these questions and applying remedies which will allow motor trucks to operate at a greater rate of speed and much more efficiently.

Accurate observations of motor truck performance in city trucking business has shown that a large part of the day is given up to loading and unloading, that the truck stands still so much of the time that the cost is more nearly proportional to time than to mileage. Since certain charges such as interest and insurance go on whether the truck is idling or not, it is better to keep it moving. To do this effectively depots, warehouses, and other terminal facilities are provided to lessen the time of loading and unloading. It may be wise to hire an extra stevedore or two to assist with these operations, or mechanical devices may be installed where the saving will justify it. Usually there is not only a saving in time when a mechanical device is used but the amount of expensive manual labor is decreased.

Among the practical devices used are removable bodies. The whole body of the truck may be swung by means of a crane from the chassis to a platform where it is loaded or unloaded while the truck with another body is proceeding on its way. Other bodies are so arranged on rollers that they may be readily rolled from the chassis to the platform. Railways are also taking advantage of removable bodies for the shipment of less than car-load lots. These bodies are made to fit a truck and also of proper sizes so that several of them may be nested or interlocked upon a flat car. One of these units or containers may be left for any length of time for loading then rolled upon the truck and off it to the steam train. At the other end of its journey it is rolled from the car to the truck and from that to the unloading platform with a great saving of time at each terminal. The New York Central railway places nine containers of 6000 pounds capacity on one flat car. These are unloaded by means of a crane in less than five minutes for each container, or the whole car in approximately forty minutes. By this means the railroad is able to take advantage of what has been called store-door delivery. Instead of the consignor hauling its goods to the station and unloading them on the platform to be loaded into cars by stevedores, transported, unloaded into the warehouse, and the consignee notified to come for them, the railway leaves a container which when filled is hauled by truck to the railway yard and in five minutes’ time placed upon the car, which upon reaching its destination is placed upon a truck and hauled to the consignee. Goods shipped in these containers which may be made of steel and securely locked are considered just as safe from predacious hands and the weather as in a way car, and possibly are safer.

The demountable container which is rapidly coming into general use, and which has for some time been used by the New York Central Railroad and the interurban railways of Australia, consists of a large steel box or safe, the doors of which can be locked. When it is placed upon a steel flat-car with sides two feet high it cannot possibly be opened as the doors are on the side of the container. And it cannot be removed from the car without the use of a derrick, the top corners of the container being equipped with hooks for this purpose. The containers have a capacity of 438 cubic feet and will hold from 6000 to 8000 pounds of package freight. When the packages are locked and sealed within the containers they are safe from fire and rain as well as marauders. One flat-car will accommodate from 4 to 9 containers, depending upon their size.

In addition to the safety furnished by these containers they are economical in saving time of transportation. Re-handling is unnecessary. The transfer of the entire container from truck to car and from car to truck is very quickly made. The mileage of the flat cars is thus greatly increased—with mail cars it is claimed to be doubled. Expensive packing and crating is avoided and the checking at each rehandling of parcels is eliminated.

Mass loading or unloading, whether the whole truck body is swung off by a crane, rolled off, or even if trailers and semi-trailers are left to be worked upon after the truck has gone, save little in the way of manual labor. On the other hand they require the installment at each end of the route of special arrangements to facilitate their use.

Another class of devices are those connected with the truck itself. For example it may have a winch on it to draw up an inclined plane at its rear such heavy articles as pianos, safes, and large castings. It may have a crane with a pulley running along a central beam over it to facilitate loading and unloading heavy boxes or other things. A swinging crane is also used with some trucks. On others, hoists are arranged to tip the body backward for unloading building and road materials, grain, and so on. Many of these devices make use of the truck power for their operation. Pumps with suction hoses empty catch basins, cess-pools, stopped-up sewers and flooded cellars, pumping the fluid to a tank body of the truck, whence it can be hauled away and dumped by elevating the front end of the tank and opening a gate in its rear. Devices for lifting and dumping coal truck bodies directly into the bin save much time over hand shoveling.

Still another class of devices are entirely separate from the truck and may or may not be connected with the warehouse. For example a chain conveyor which can be rolled up to the back of a truck elevates barrels and boxes, sand and stone, and is operated by a small electric motor the lead wires of which are plugged into a suitable socket, up to the floor at the rear of the truck from which place they can be easily pushed or shoveled to proper position. Elevated bins are utilized to store road materials from which the materials run by gravity into the body of a small motor-car which then goes to the mixer where it is grabbed by a device that empties the body into the mixer, thus saving much handling of material.