New Britain herald., 1915-03-03
Cent1al Delipe1y System is
 Recommended by Committee
Secretary A. H. Andrews Shows Merchants Where $2 900 Year Can Be Saved-Reports Made Last Evening
 at Mercantile Bureau Dinner and Meeting.

A saving of at least $25,OOO a yea in the deliveries already being madt in New Britain or, in other words, ]; reduction of the average delivery ex pense of the average merchant, frou seven to two and a half per cent. o1 his gross business, was shown, by Secretary A. H. Andrews to the mem bers of the Mercantile bureau last night at the meeting held in Hote Beloin This saving would be made a fact by the adoption of a system oi cooperative deliveries.
 There are several business men in the city, said MT. Andrews, who would gain from three to five thousand dol lars year by the adoption of such q system of central delivery. This sys tenn also would give a service to the consumers far superior to that in any other city in New England. From twenty to thirty cities in Ohio and Michigan leave central systems and MT. Andrews recently visited two or three of the cities boasting of the system.
 AS a result of his investigations and those of the committee appointed to consider the system of cooperative delivery, MT. Andrews in concluding his report, made the following state ment: Your committee feels that there is no one thing that can be brought about in New /,itain which will do more to up-build the city and place it on the map and we place be- fore you this evening the results Of our investigation up-to- date"
 Mir. Andrews Report. B.
 Following is the report:
 The study of cooperative delivery which the Mercantile bureau of he Chamber of Commerce has undertalS- en becomes more interesting as the study advances.
 While the term cooperative deliv- cry is used almost always in reference to this subject a much better title would be central delivery, for while a number of these delivery companies are strictly cooperative many of them are not.
 When your committee took up the work delegated to it by the directors of the Mercantile bureau, they had in mind some sort of cooperative deliy- cry system to benefit those merchants who now do not have any system of delivery of their own, except possibly that of errand boys, but as the study progressed ana information was gath cred from various cities where deliv- cry systems were in operation, it be- came evident that if New Britain worked out a system after the idea of those systems successfully in operation in the middle west, that it would be necessary to include the provision dealers as well as the miscellaneous merchants.
 As the idea of a central or cooper alive delivery system has practically never been worked out in the New England states or hardly in the east <crn part of the country. it may be we'll to state briefly just what central de- livery system Is.
 Details of Plan.
 This system consists first of a col lection service from those merchants who desire to have their goods deliv- cred to their customers. At certain hours of the day, teams of the delivery company call at the various stores and collect all goods ready for delivery at that time. These goods are immediate ly taken to central station where they are sorted for the various routes into which the city has been divided