Already the motor terminals company is hauling about one thousand tons of
freight through the streets of Cincinnati in nine hours of each business
day. Its trucks, with maximum outside dimensions of seventeen feet six
inches by eight feet, are both shorter and narrower than the lorries of
the old transfer company and infinitely less subject to delays under
conditions of inclement weather. Moreover understand, if you will, that
the transfer company, with all of its 115 lorries, hauled but 38 per cent.
of the through L. C. L. freight between the various terminals of
Cincinnati. To handle all of it would have taken at least 250 horse-drawn
trucks, while if it had attempted the problem of handling the sub-stations
another fleet of at least equal size would have been required.
Yet its motorized successor is now handling every pound of the thousand
tons or more of transfer freight at Cincinnati daily as well as all the
sub-station work, with the slight increase of twenty-four bodies to the
201 already in service and without the increase of a single chassis to its
present operating fleet of fifteen. To perfect and quicken its service the
overhead cranes for loading and unloading the box-bodies are being
equipped with motor-trolleys, in place of the man-power chain
arrangements, which in turn represents a speed of fifty feet a minute as
against but seven under the old order of things. And this of course is
still further efficiency.
So much then for the situation as it stands to-day in Cincinnati. It does
not take very much of a vision to see in the proved success of a terminal
plan, which already has ceased to be an experiment, a great enlargement of
the freight gathering and distributing scheme for the entire city. No
longer will it be necessary or even essential that a freight-house of a
railroad be located either at or near rails. It can come far closer to its
users. In other words railroad sub-stations for the collection and
delivery of package-freight can be established in every industrial section
of Cincinnati, thus shortening the haul for individual patrons and so in
turn perceptibly lessening the congestion in the city streets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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