American Rural Highways. T. R. Agg
direct profit and the responsibility of securing consideration of the demand for improvements is not centralized. Therefore, sentiment for road improvement has been of slow growth, and important projects are often delayed until long after the need for them was manifest. Movements to secure financial support for highway improvement must go through the slow process of legislative enactment, encountering all of the uncertainties of political action, and the resulting financial plan is likely to be inadequate and often inequitable.
The whole commercial structure of a nation rests upon transportation, and the highways are a part of the transportation system. The highway problem can never receive adequate consideration until public highways are recognized as an indispensable element in the business equipment of a nation.
During the World War all transportation facilities 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]
"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."
[1] Engineering News Record, July 10, 1919.
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
| A | B | C | D | E | F | Average Total | ||
| Driver | $5.00 | $5.20 | $5.00 | $5.00 | $5.17 | $5.50 | $5.13 | |
| Tires | 3.00 | 3.75 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.68 | |
| Oil, etc. | .30 | … | .30 | .50 | .25 | .25 | .35 | |
| Gasoline | 3.00 | 4.00 | 3.50 | 4.65 | 2.08 | 3.75 | 3.50 | |
| $11.66 |
Indirect Charges per Day
| A | B | C | D | E | F | Average Total | ||
| Depreciation | $3.50 | $4.19 | $3.60 | $3.40 | $3.67 | $4.00 | $3.77 | |
| Interest | 1.20 | 1.26 | 1.08 | 1.22 | 1.10 | 1.00 | 1.15 | |
| Insurance | 1.50 | 2.54 | 1.26 | 2.10 | .86 | .50 | 1.47 | |
| Garage | 1.00 | 1.20 | 1.00 | 1.00 | .89 | 1.00 | 1.01 | |
| Maintenance | .50 | … | .50 | … | 1.00 | … | .75 | |
| Overhaul | 1.33 | 2.75 | 1.80 | 1.60 | 2.00 | 3.00 | 2.07 | |
| License | .17 | .27 | .20 | .20 | .20 | .20 | .20 |