Indiana daily times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1914-1922, 1921-06-11

PROBLEMS
The By-Product
COking Business
ID. Why We Do Not Make
Wagon-Lot Sales Of Coke
at Our Plants.
From time to time we are asked why we do not
sell wagon-Oads of coke at our plants to anybody
who wants to call for it, We will endeavor to ex-
plain why this seems impractcable to us.
pressed with the fact that most of our coke piles
inaccessible wagons and trucks because
the plants necessarily laid out with refer
to handling coke rapidly in large quanti-
ties This is not insuperabe obstacle to
wagon business, could doubtless lay out
wagon yard at each plant. 1t would mean
waste of valuable space and such change
would be very difficult to bring about at time
like the present when coke stocks are most I'M
wiedy.
2 We do not at present have the equipment or the
organization to handle such business. In add
ton to railroad sidings and bins for wagon
yards we should have to install wagon scales and
sales Offices and employ clerks to make the sales
and supervise the loading and weighing. Such
business would have to be a cash basis and
this would involve prompt transfers of money
to city office, coke sales ofires at
plants would not be safe places in which to leave
money We could establish such equipment and
organization at each of our plants, but the in
necessary to charge considerably wagon
load sales than carload sales, for the business
would be small as compared with the cost
8. Assuming that we did not add this expense to
selling prize but sold wagon-lots at the
price car-lots the sales would still be small.
Not many consumers would undertake to pro-
vide their teams and to unload the coke and
put it into their cellars. If they did not al
ready have transportation facilities and men in
their employ to do this they would find the
trouble and annoyance too great for the doubt
full economies TO be secured.
Few of the regular coal dealers would send to
the plants for coke because transportation to
their yards by railroad and from their yards to
their customers by wagon would be cheaper than
to haul the coke from plants to their Gus
TONER'S Furthermore their regular organiza-
tions at their yards can handle business better
from those places than from plants. few
dealers whose yards plants might
take coke IN wagonlots, but the amount thus
taken would be very small.
The principal class of buyers of wagon-lots of
coke would be coal peddlers rather than con-
regular dealers-persons with little
capital and meager equipment who solicit orders
and then go after their supplies. If we stood
the extra cost of supplying this wagon trade
such men might sell coke within limited area
about each of our plants at less than the prices
asked by regular dealers If we charged them
a fair price to our extra expense they
could not compete with the regular dealers.
f. We do not believe would benefit either the
community ourselves by catering to this
class Of trade On the other hand we are sure
would damage both Peddlers hauling from
plants could supply only small proportion
of our total population at most They could not
be depended upon except in dull times when
they could not get other employment. They
would injure the regular dealers who maintain
equipment and organizations to serve the
community at all times, and without which
the community could not be supplied with
fuel. They pay taxes yards and business
stocks and facilities They could per-
ceptiby increase the coke consumption of the
community, although they might cut into the
coke business of the regular retail fuel
chant to a slight extent.
Whether the 65 retail fuel dealers who are
handling Our coke are ruShin0 If as thew should