A fifty-mile haul may be used as an illustration for figuring the total running expense of the 5-ton truck. This means that the truck makes trips enough to total fifty miles for the day's run. The cost per mile, including gasoline, oil and repairs is 26.4 cents. It will, therefore, cost $13.20 for the fifty miles. To this amount must be added $12.92, daily overhead charge, making a total of $26.12 for fifty miles traveled or 52.2 cents a mile. With an average load of four thousand feet the cost will be 13.0 cents per mile per thousand feet. A glance at the table will show that the greater the mileage and the larger the load, the less will be the overhead expense and consequently the cost per mile per thousand feet. To these items must be added the cost and maintenance of the road if one has to be built. ROAD CONSTRUCTION The question of the kind of road for hauling logs with the motor truck is a very important one. It is impossible to move a fifteen-ton load day in and day out unless there are good roads, and no motor truck operation of reasonably large proportions can be successfully maintained without a road that is well constructed and which will not give way during any kind of weather, under the loads that are carried. One cannot successfully and continuously operate on dirt or even gravel roads as they are good only when dry. Good roads are as important to the motor truck operator as the railroad is to the transportation of logs by rail. The big handicap in motor truck logging in the past has been poor roads. The same man who will survey, grade, carefully lay and ballast the steel for a logging railroad will many times put a truck and trailer on a poor dirt road and expect the truck to haul economically and satisfactorily. A motor truck will haul over some mighty poor apologies for roads but it does not pay. A good road is an excellent investment. It makes larger loads and more trips a day possible, will save on tires and repairs, and will require less gasoline to the mile; the efficiency and output will be increased and the time and operating costs will be decreased. [Illustration: Sub-grade for motor truck logging road.] There have been some very successful operators who have secured a small body of timber at a low price on a public road who made the motor truck pay without building a road. This method of logging in a small way will continue to be carried on by small operators who will haul only during three seasons of the year or even less. However, the big future for the motor truck for logging is in the larger tracts of timber where it would not pay to put in a railroad but where a good type of motor truck road can be built cheaply and loads as large as the truck can handle be carried with no road restrictions as to the weight.