OCR Text |
Show 801 OF SHORT ML UK SI Motor Truck and Good Road Advocates Explain Economic Law. Say New Method of Transportation Trans-portation Makes Itself Felt Clearly. By the law of economics which decrees de-crees that the fittest shall survive, the branch line railroad will yield its freight, at a time not far distant, to the motor truck and the good road, according ac-cording to predictions of ship-b3'-truck advocates, who point to findings of investigators in-vestigators and to events of today as significant of the change in transportation transpor-tation methods which is to come. "While the building of branch line railways is at a standstill, the building of good roads is proceeding on an enormous enor-mous scale," says Charles Whiting Baker, consulting editor of the Engineering Engi-neering News Eccord, in a report submitted sub-mitted after an exhaustive study of the relative economy of trucks and railroads. Improvement of highways and increasing in-creasing use of automobiles is given over the signature of the president of the Ludington & Northern railroad as an official reason for the financial failure of that railroad, according to news reports from Lansing, Mich. The railroad is deeding title to and use of its right of way in Hamlin township to the township for use as a highway, the report adds. Cut Carrying Cost. "It is necessary now to cut the cost of transportation from farm to market," mar-ket," says the bureau of crop estimates. esti-mates. United States department of agriculture, in its weekly truck crop report dated September 12. And the report adds, "The truck does it." "Adequate and efficient transportation transporta-tion facilities are and will be the most important factor in producing prosperity pros-perity in this country," Secretary of War Baker is quoted as saying in connection con-nection with the army's first convoy of motor trucks to make a transeonti' nental trip. The convoy was sent from coast to coast with a mission that included in-cluded demonstrating the practicability of the motor truck as a freight hauler and arousiDg interest in good roads. "Any comprehensive plan to keep the cost of food to the consumer at the lowest possible figures must involve a nation-wide movement for good roads," says the Kansas City Star in a recent editorial emphasizing the fact that the more it costs to get food from the farms to the towns, the higher the cost of living is bound to be. Light Lines Take Loss. "The problem before us relates not merely to the transportation to and from the railway station," writes the consulting editor of the Engineering News Record in his report already referred re-ferred to. "It has to do with the light traffic branch railways, on which the cost of hauling freight per ton mile is often ten to twenty times as great as on the heavy traffic railways. Almost without exception these light traffic lines do not pay. Their construction con-struction has come to a stop. Investors Inves-tors will not furnish money to build them, and the great railway companies also have ceased to build branch lines, i There has been an awakening to the ! fact that such extensions are generally a burden on rather than a benefit to the company." I E. Farr, chief of the Firestone ship bv truck bureau, in a recent letter to the Salt Lake branch of the bureau, at 31 West Fourth South street, declares the motor truck, by coming forward and meeting emergencies, is gradually but surely proving it is supreme in the short-haul field. Concrete Example. ''For example, in an emergency during dur-ing the harvest season just passed, Kavanaugh (& Shea, implement dealers at Alva, Okla., brought the motor truck into requisition in obtaining harvest machinery supplies from Wichita, Kan., a distance of approximately 125 miles. The truck went to Wichita one day and back the next. It proved its practicability prac-ticability on the first trip, the report states, and remained on the job as long as the harvest rush made urgent the demand de-mand for speedy delivery. "It is just by nosing itself forward in such emergencies that the motor truck as a freight hauler is proving its value. The person or persons benefiting by it during the period of emergency learns to appreciate it and before long will demand that its service be permanent. perma-nent. ' ' |