It would seem strange in our era of advanced technology that transportation of goods around the nation and the world is relatively inefficient and beset with problems. Tractor and trailer combinations are traffic-clogging, relatively slow at any speed limit, in proportion to the amount of payload that they carry, and thus, from the economic viewpoint, somewhat inefficient.
Transport ships carry larger loads, but are obviously restricted to areas served by waterways.
Trains seem to combine some of the better features of other surface carriers, but seem constantly plagued with a shortage of cars, and are, moreover, restricted to areas where rails and services have been installed. Carrier aircraft, while effectively solving the problem of speed, use enormous amounts of fuel at a time when the need to conserve fuel is pressing. Moreover, goods transported by conventional aircraft almost always have to be transferred to another mode of transportation before they can arrive at their destination. What we are talking about, of course, is the dirigible , or airship . The use of dirigibles to transport enormous cargo loads or large numbers of passengers is not new, nor a concept just off the drawing board, still in need of extensive field testing.