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Show Let's Face Facts Teamwork Solving Farm Truck Problem, Toughest Bottleneck By BARROW LYONS 1 WNU Staff Correspondent I WASHINGTON, D. C. How would you like to be responsible respon-sible for moving, with too few trucks, more than half of which are over seven years old, and many driven by green drivers, one of the biggest crops the United States has ever produced? pro-duced? That is the job assigned to Robert A. Hicks, chief of the farm vehicle r--v section, ODT di-I di-I I vision of motor I transport. He has I i to organize and I II bring int0 e I X j toest bunch oI I I rugged individu- I V i ' i alists ever lined . l I up in one group I . ' the farmers and I Vf I truckers of Amer- L.AL.J lcaThere ls ,ust Barrow Lyons one thing thet makes the job possible the farmers and truckers know that if they don't use their trucks to best advantage, a large part of one of the greatest crops ever harvested won't get moved to market. mar-ket. Here are some figures that pretty much speak for themselves: In 1941 there were 1,583,000 trucks owned by farmers available for moving crops to market. Today the number is about 25 per cent less about 1,200,000 and hundreds are going off the road every day due to old age and smash-ups. There are some 500,000 for-hire trucks also available, many of them running on worn-out tires. Of the trucks now owned by farmers, farm-ers, 55 per cent about 660,000 are more than seven years old, and about half of these are more than ten years old. To organize the operation of these trucks, most of which are owned by individual farmers, 142 district offices of-fices were set up and 20,931 transportation trans-portation advisory committees formed, involving 88,913 persons. Working Better This Year This organization worked pretty well in most areas last year, although al-though there was a good deal of grumbling, which was only natural. It is working better this year, and there is less grumbling because the necessity for cooperation is considerably consid-erably greater and is generally recognized. rec-ognized. Everyone realizes this year why there is so great a shortage of trucks. Our army has prepared for the greatest invasion operation of all times. It knew that virtually any advance made on any front would have to be accompanied by heavy truck movements, for the enemy en-emy will tear up every bit of rail line he can as he retreats, and it takes time to repair railway beds, bridges, culverts and lay new track. So the army has taken virtually the entire output of new trucks for military purposes. In 1941 there were 750,000 trucks produced for civilian use, of which number 456,000 replaced worn-out or obsolete equipment. When the United Unit-ed States entered the war, about 150,000 trucks In the hands of manufacturers manu-facturers or dealers were "frozen." These have been placed where there was greatest need, and now are all working. During 1942 and 1943, only 3 000 new trucks were turned out for civilian use. The program for 1944 calls for 88,000 trucks for civilian allocation, al-location, but most of these will be produced in the second half of the year. If we get all that have been programmed pro-grammed this year, the total available avail-able for three years will be only 241,-000 241,-000 to replace a normal disappearance disappear-ance of 1,368,000 trucks. That gives only the statistical picture pic-ture The more difficult operation has been to get a great many people, peo-ple, strong on managing their own affairs in their own way, to work together toward the common goaJ of winning the war. Schedules on All Crops The first move in this direction was to program crop-moving operations. opera-tions. Schedules have been set up n every area for important crops. For instance, through cooperative use of trucks, dairy toer, ri creameries plan to save 58 000 000 truck miles in moving milk and Team- Duplication of routes has been almost eliminated. Fruit and vegetable crops for canning have required re-quired special planning. Where perishable crops must be moved to canning factories, round Se - clock programs have been worked out, wherever canning facil-mes facil-mes are large enough to take care of this traffic. In some instances t waiting at both ends of SThaui hTvTbeen eliminated by careful planning. When there are not enough trucks , area to take caje of the trhanyt be averted or a t.m matoes or fruit c v bg Tinfa a assistance is giv- areas' i nf equipment is poSrsJgenerai, effective. |