Salt Lake Tribune | 1918-11-10 | Page 35 | Cross Continent Motor Lines Soon

CROSS COM ' MOTQRJMS SOQHI Transcontinental Truck Service a Possibility, Says A. R Bement. Shipping freight from coast to roast by motor truck has already been attempted; Indeed, has actually been successful, but purely as a "stunt," to demonstrate the endurance of some particular motor truck. But within the next few months, according to A. F. Bement, secretary of the Lincoln Highway association, writing writ-ing in the November issue of MoTor. the National Magazine of Motoring, transcontinental transcon-tinental freighting by motor truck is going go-ing to become a commercial possibility, through the establishment of a 365-day-a-year route, the Lincoln highway. The final smoorMng off of the Lincoln highway comes through the construction of certain strategic sections, through particularly par-ticularly difficult country in Nevada. vVyoming and particularly Utah, where the road crosses the Great-Salt Take desert. des-ert. Construction is proceeding apace on all these difficult sections, and. says Mr. Belmont: "These spots will be eliminated elim-inated by the end of the year, and then it will be possible to run a truck freight service over the Lincoln highway from New York to San Francisco on a regular schedule." Some of the difficulties of the road builders working in fhe desert are described. de-scribed. In the first plane, U was found Inmossible to get a reliable contractor to bid on the work, because conditions were so unusual that no definite scale of costs could be reached. "The .ion of surveying a line across the Great Salt Lake desert itself was found to present unusual difficulties,'' dif-ficulties,'' continues the author. 'At a little distance, in the shimmering heat waves arising from the desert's surface and under the glaring sun. an object arises from the earth, apparently, and seems to float waveringly here and there. Correctlv sighting a transit is a matter fraught with great difficulty. The blinding blind-ing glare of the desert plays strange tricks with the human eye. The result was that the Goodyear memorial section across the desert was surveyed during the' twilight hours by the use of signal fires. Then came the herculean effort necessary to transport the machinery to the western west-ern end of the desert work and to grade the desert Itself and to provide the gravel gra-vel surface, which next year will present a boulevard across a waste now impassable." impass-able." This new section of the Lincoln highway high-way will provide a road eliminating many hours of difficult travel and saving fifty odd miles. Tt would never have been built except for the actual financial assistance as-sistance of the Lincoln Hlehway association, associa-tion, as the sparse'y settled region could not have paid for it, nor would the state of LTtah have been aMe to provide funds from its slender highway appropriation. In these circumstances the directors of the Lincoln Highway PssoHatlon came to the rescue. F. A. Peiberling. oresMent of the association and also of the Good-vear Good-vear Ruber companv. nledged JTS.non for his ore-nnizt'on to build the desert road. Tniin N. Willys pledged $"0.000 for his Willys-Over' and organization to build the road through O'erlPnd canyon, the -estem entrance to thp desert road. Carl Fisher nledeed personally $25,000 to build the road through Fisber nass on the east. Later. whn it was found that tbA desert road would cost movp thn had first been pynr-tpfl, Mr. p-niherlincr erponally nlPrte-Ad an additional ?n,000. Finally the interest of the T'tab highway authorities was enlisted and the entire sum raised waff turned over to them and the road across the desert Is now heine built under un-der state ausnices. through the use of prisoners. The whn campaign and its accomplishment reflects the greatest crdH unon the patriotic memhprs of the L'nco'n Highway association, whose gen-erositv gen-erositv has md possible the construction construc-tion of this last link in a great transcontinental transcon-tinental highway freight route.