were taxed to the
limit, and motor trucks were utilized for long distance freight
haulage to an extent not previously considered practicable. As a
result, the interest in the motor truck as an addition to the
transportation equipment of the nation, has been greatly stimulated.
Many haulage companies have entered the freight transportation field,
delivering commodities by truck to distances of a hundred miles or
more.

The part the motor truck will play in the future can only be
estimated, but it seems clear that the most promising field is for
shipments destined to or originating in a city of some size and a
warehouse or store not on a railroad spur, and especially when the
shipments are less than car load lots. The delays and expense incident
to handling small shipments of freight through the terminals of a
large city and carting from the unloading station to the warehouse or
other destination constitute a considerable item in the cost of
transportation.

Mr. Charles Whiting Baker, Consulting Editor of _Engineering
News-Record_, states:[1]

[1] Engineering News Record, July 10, 1919.

"It costs today as much to haul a ton of farm produce ten miles
to a railway station as it does to haul it a thousand miles over
a heavy-traffic trunk-line railway. It often costs more today to
transport a ton of merchandise from its arrival in a long train
in the freight yard on the outskirts of a great city to its
deposit in the warehouse of a merchant four or five miles away
than it has cost to haul it over a thousand miles of railway
line."

Nevertheless it seems probable that new methods of operating the motor
truck transport, and possibly new types of trucks or trucks and
trailers will be developed so that freight traffic over many roads
will be of considerable tonnage and an established part of the
transportation system of the nation. In the article above referred to
are given the following data relative to the cost of hauling on
improved roads by motor truck and these cost estimates are based on
the best information available at this time. They should be considered
as approximate only, but serve to indicate the limitations of the
truck as a competitor of the steam railway.

TABLE 1

TRUCK OPERATION COSTS, FROM REPORTS BY SIX MOTOR TRUCK
OPERATORS, DIRECT CHARGES PER DAY

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