Highways and Highway TransportationChatburn, George R.
History
Highways and Highway Transportation
Chatburn, George R.
Roads; Transportation
A graphical representation shows the continuous increase of driven-in
to the total receipts. The table of percentages and the graphical
representation are not given in the bulletin. They show very clearly
what happened when the motor truck began to function in 1917. The
truck has made a very much more effective showing at Indianapolis
than at Omaha. No doubt this is because (1) the average haul at Omaha
is longer; Omaha draws from a more sparsely settled country and from
longer distances; (2) the roads adjacent to Omaha are nearly all, as
yet, earth-surfaced. Only a few hard roads have been built; (3) many of
the farms in the Omaha territory are large and sell so many animals at
a time that they can easily fill one, two, or three railway cars at a
shipment. The percentage of truck-hauled stock will no doubt continue
to increase until practically all hogs within the economic radius of
truck operation are marketed by motor. When the time comes, if it ever
will, when abattoirs are established at distances no farther apart
than 100 to 150 miles, making the maximum haul 50 to 75 miles, the
percentage of stock handled by the railroads to these abattoirs will
be very small indeed. The larger packing houses with the advantages of
great quantity production will still be able to reach out into the more
remote districts and secure that proportion of animals necessary to
keep them going which can not be obtained locally.
[Illustration: Showing the increase of truck-delivered hogs at
Indianapolis and at Omaha.]
That there is still an opportunity for increases of motor-hauled stock
a further quotation from the Firestone Bulletin will show:
“The territory served by trucks in marketing live stock is principally
within a 50-mile radius of the market center. In the course of
investigation the longest haul which came under observation was 140
miles. The average haul on the days the investigators were at the
markets was about 30 miles. The following table gives some idea of the
length of hauls at the four different yards:
------------+--------+-------+--------+-------
| No. of |Longest|Shortest|Average
| Trucks | Haul, | Haul, | Haul,
Yard |Observed| Miles | Miles | Miles
------------+--------+-------+--------+-------
St. Joseph | 48 | 100 | 9 | 27
Omaha | 62 | 75 | 6 | 28.2
Cincinnati | 40 | 72 | 3.5 | 28.9
Indianapolis| 40 | 97 | 7 | 32.5
------------+--------+-------+--------+-------
“While the average haul is 28.95 miles, most of the trucks observed
in the course of investigation use solid-tire equipment. This type of
equipment had a tendency to restrict the mileage.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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