The news scimitar. (Memphis, Tenn.) 1907-1926, 1919-10-11

many months IN the year as a UldGduam
read, II il necessary to move grain,
livestock and cotton to market before
bad weather sets in, which calls for
motor trucks OF surplus capacity, a
truck with ample motor power 10
manipulate from 80 to 100 per cent
carrying as much as the trucks rated
load, You can't do this with my over
rated truck. An overrated two-ton
truck, in many instances, has not, in
reality. as much actual carrying ca
pacity as many one-ton underrated
worm-driveu trucks,
The speaker recently returned from
IN extensive trip through the agri
cultural seoticn of the middle and
northwest, where much valuable ia
formation was obtained. In the pa-
kotas, where the roads are black gum |
on what is known as a buckshot con
dit!on. but packs very hard, ] was
advised by dealers and bankers in
Fargo. Aberdeen and other points that
the roads there were good all last year
and we're only bad during January and
February of this year.
Automobile dealers, in the agri-
cultural section of the middle and
northwest, are taking advantage Of the
farmers lack OF knowledge and eN-
p~erience with motor trucks, by selling
them many fly-by-night, makeshift.
| overrated, so-called one-ton or one and
one -half-ton trucks, that they could not
sell to a business man in town at any
price, One dealer went so FAR as to tell
me that he had sold a great many of
these makeshift trucks to farmers and
that he had only been able 10 sell one
In the city where he is located,
that was to a fellow just starting in
the transfer business,
The future is very bright for the
manufacturers and distributor VINO will
step out into the open and do his part
now, when ii is essential, and in doing
his part he Is laying a foundation for
a bigger future and a greater industry,
The rural postal delivery brought the
farm many miles nearer town. The
rural motor express must be. Farms
are Immediately enhanced in value
when a good road is built in a COM
munity. You will hear such remarks
as: oh, yes, We have a fine macadam
road right TO our front gate etc, You
will find, If you have not already found,
farms offered for sale on the basis Of
having a rural motor express coming
and going one side of 1t. perhaps two
sides Of It, as we get into it more thor
oughly. What we do when We send
the motor truck through the rural CEN
ters, is to push the rural free delivery
and parcel post service Just one step
forward. 1t is a thing that has got
to be, and in a very few years at least,
lust as accepted as the rising ard set
ting of the sun The public authori~
ties must be sufficiently educated to
make a good thing possible. They must
learn, as have most farmers, that ,tle
most costly thing 10 the world Is bad
roads. Niue Is mans greatest common
enemy-it prevents progress in educa-
ton, slows down, and in many cases,
renders impossible delivery of food
stuffs, produced on the farm, to the
user, In a fresh and merchandise con-
dition.
This is the age OF speed. A nation
can move only SO fast as Its people
move. You have seen one man hold up
a whole train In the New York subway;
YOU have seen one train in the subway
hold up the whole system. You have
seen a slow moving horse and wagon
tie up the traffic in your own CITY
streets, and you have seen our perish
on the ground, because we have never
furnished modern transportation TO
move the product off the farm. The
farmer can't produce and transport at
the Same time.
We work with feverish haste to push
steel rails to the mines, the steel mills
to every city, so that our manufacture
products may reach the market, or per-
haps tidewater, for reshtpment to all
parts of the world, but we have neg.
lected the most important endeavor Q,
AL, which is agriculture, We should
encourage snel production. Produce or
i fruits should not be hauled three or
five hundred miles, when just as good
can b. grown within a few miles OF
our door and delivered to our own local
markets by motor trucks operated over
good roads.
: Rails cannot reach your rural dis
~tricts-they cannot go over the hills ana
under them--,t would not be profitaple
4, to do so, but a rural motor express
, can.
DO you know that we are never more
than so days ahead of famine aud
=. starvation between harvests--that II all
: the crops of the world failed at che
t time for a period Of three months, We
on this planet would cease? While this
. has never happened, it Is not impos-
sible.
Speed up-motorize cur highways.
, Let us not be placed in a position
| where the tying up Of a railroad ny a
strike or storm is going to make those
! we love suffer.
5 A rural motor express in a eommuni-
t ty will stimulate greater efforts in the
o farmer to produce more-bring more
frcsher and better food, at lower cos
to you. and produce a surplus to bt
stored for emergencies.
+ We should build as Rome built. a
. system of highways that will bear the
{ burden of war, when need be, and carry
= the of the world without q
break. Rome could not have aspirett
y 10 ln1DEIlul itbltllllbi w ~ " VI ~
3 it not been for the great military hign,'
WAYS she had constructed, whicl
. brought remote parts within easy reacF
of the seat OF the empire. and whict
made the old saying. An roads leat
to Rome" a true ono. H9r highway
We're so well built that they har'
weathered the lapse Of time and toda'
stand as a monument to her everlasting
credit. .
There is no longer any doubt as tt
the comparative cost between raiiWa'
and highway transportation, in les
than carload lots. This matter wa
Officially settled on oct. 80, WI, by
military truck test ever the Dixie high
way, between the U, S. government
warehouse, Atlanta, Ga, and the sam
nooga. under the direct observation o
government officers at Atlarta, Ga
and Chattanooga, in connection Wit
officers from the Chattanooga Autotno
4 bile club and officials Of the DiXl
Highway association.
Sergt. o. Nj. Thomas, (U. s. govern
ment highway TRANSFORMATION exnert
under NE persona al direction of M41o
A.. L. Bump. tpost quartermHster f0r
0%glethcrpe, CAD, reported the run a
The distance from T.. s. governmer
warehouse Atlanta Ga, to TIE same a
over the Dixie highway Is 1876 miles;
standard model u two-ton indian
truck No. 3S-from one Of our fleets q
the Fort, driven by Private Mchai
made the run in eight hours and SGye
at a cost Of a little lie 81 than four cent
ner 100 lbs, less than carload cost b
a rail and in one-third the time require
by rail" .
The following figures were take
! from the books Of the Green Rural Mo
( Tor exprass, operating between Marion
( Indiana and Anderson, Indiana, a dis
I tanca Of 80 miles:
Operation OF a 3k-ton Indiana true
IN rural motor express as copied Trol
the books of Green's Rural Motor EX
press Co
. Truck bought and placed In operati9
pec !. 1918,
Distance between Marion and Ander