Factory Products.
—Scarcely a manufacturing industry but that owns motor trucks, some of them running into the hundreds. No doubt these trucks have had their effect on the goods manufactured just as any other machine introduced into the process might do. In some instances goods that were marketed through jobbers are being sold directly to the retailer and sent to them by routings which return to the same customer every day, every two days, twice or once a week, or once a month, or in such regular periods the customer may look forward and depend upon the coming. Packing houses by delivering meat with truck directly to the retailer’s butcher block daily have practically driven out of business the old slaughter houses with their unpleasant odors and unsanitary conditions.
Special bodies have been devised for the different manufactured products. A slatted rack accommodates nearly 300 empty barrels; tanks are made to haul milk, gasoline, or other liquids; cracker factories have racks which will accommodate cardboard cartons without injury by crushing; low long-bodied trucks upon which cotton bales may be placed without much lifting lessens the time and labor of loading; different-sized drawers on the inside of a body have been used to take clothing-store goods to customers in outlying districts; plumbers fit up shops on wheels, claiming thereby to save time and expense to their patrons by not having to go back to the shop numerous times in the course of a job to get tools and supplies; furniture and automobile trucks have large roomy bodies to carry bulky but not very heavy goods. Hoists, cranes, tipping bodies, combination bodies, conveying belts and chains and many other devices facilitate rapid unloading and loading.
By sending goods from factory to retailer by motor railway terminal expense is cut out. Just how far it is profitable to send goods by truck is a question depending on the relative terminal charges, the hauling rate, and the collecting charges. The collecting charges at a factory might or might not be the same for shipments by rail and by truck. If the railroad switch is such that there is no hauling from factory to car except that on the floor of the factory itself, there would be no difference, otherwise there would be the expense of hauling to the loading tracks. If the expense of selling is not affected by motor hauling the only thing to be considered is the actual cost of transportation. If this be taken to be made up of two items, namely, terminal costs, and hauling costs, the distributing charge by railway may be written:
D = T + Rx
| where | T | is the railroad terminal cost; |
| R, | the railroad rate per mile cost per unit-package, barrel, cwt. or ton; | |
| x, | the number of miles hauled. |
The distributing charge by truck would be a similar equation
d = t + rx
where the letters represent the same items referred to the truck. If D is made equal to d, there results,
t + rx = T + Rx