Edwin A. Pratt

“ With the large wholesale and retail houses the use of the road motor is a matter not simply of economy in transport but, to a still greater degree, of doing a larger business, in less time, and over a wider area, than if horsed vehicles were used. ”

“ Theatrical companies on tour use motor-vehicles for the conveyance of themselves, plus belongings and scenery. Political propagandists, also on tour, move in their motor-van from one village to another with an ease that no other road vehicle could surpass. Religious missions are being sent out in motor-vans fitted up as chapels, and duly dedicated to their special purpose. ”

“ It will be seen, however, that the combined operations of the Royal Automobile Club, the Automobile Association and Motor Union, and the Road Board constitute, in effect—and more especially from the point of view of provision of facilities for through traffic under satisfactory conditions—a national road policy far in advance of anything this country has ever seen before.
These road improvements appeal to the motorist, delighting in cross-country journeys, still more than they do to the urban trader, whose road transport does not, generally speaking, extend beyond a certain radius. ”

“ In almost every class of trade or business the commercial motor is being steadily substituted for horsed vehicles. There are large retail houses in London which have each their "fleets" of up to fifty or sixty motor-vans or lorries. [1] The carrying companies would hardly be able to provide their extensive suburban services of to-day without road motors. Fishmongers, ice merchants and fruit salesmen, who especially require to have a speedy means of distributing their wares, favour the commercial motor no less than do the managers of evening newspapers. ”

“ When one adds to these considerations the fact that traders not only in the United Kingdom but in the colonies, in every European country, and even as far away as Japan, are looking to English and Scotch manufacturers to supply them with motor-traction vehicles, the impression is conveyed that the further great development of the motor industry in the United Kingdom will be far less in pleasure motors, or even in the motors used by doctors and others for professional purposes, than in commercial motors ”

“ Thus we see that automobilism—using the word in its widest application—has not only brought about some remarkable changes in our conditions of inland transport and communication but is itself rapidly developing into still another of our national industries, even if it should not have done so already.
Tube railways are an outcome of various attempts to solve a problem in urban transport that more especially applies to London. ”

“ A succession of improvements followed, including pneumatic tires, free wheels, two-speed and three-speed gears, the adaptation of the bicycle to the use of ladies, and the supplementing of the bicycle by tricycles, sociables, tandems and the motor-cycle.
Cycles have been well defined as "the poor man's carriage"; but they are to-day favoured by every class of the community. Thanks, more especially, to the numerous local cycling clubs and the great touring clubs, of which the latter count their members by tens of thousands, cycles have materially developed the taste for travel ”

“ Public prejudice and State policy were factors in the arrested development, in this country, of the application of mechanical power to road vehicles, so that while such application has its ancient history equally with the bicycle, the actual expansion thereof—on such lines that it has now become the dominating feature in road transport generally—has been brought about in quite recent times. ”

“ Real expansion of the home industry came with the Heavy Motor-car Order of 1904, although even then no great degree of progress followed immediately thereon. Traders generally were reluctant to acquire commercial motors for themselves until the success of the new vehicles had been assured, and some early failures, due to faulty construction, gave commercial motors a bad name at the start. With the adoption of improved methods, their utility was fully established, and the expansion of the industry during the last four or five years has been remarkable in the extreme. ”

“ In the recesses of Wild Wales there has been seen a commercial motor-vehicle which was virtually a shop or a general stores on wheels—something after the style of the familiar gypsies' van, though of a far superior type. There are evidently endless possibilities in this direction. The time may come when it will not be necessary for the rural resident to go to the shops in even the nearest town. ”

“ But within the limits of such radius the substitution of commercial motors for horse-drawn vehicles is undergoing an expansion which seems to be restricted only by the extent of the motor-car manufacturers' powers of production, while already the use of so many commercial motors is accentuating certain changes in commercial conditions which—as it is one of the objects of the present work to show—have ever been powerfully influenced by the transport facilities of the day. ”

“ British inventors, thus effectively prevented by hostile legislation from improving self-propelled road-vehicles, turned their attention, instead, to tricycles and bicycles, while continental inventors, not being hampered by legislative restrictions in their own country, first converted the tricycle into a motor-vehicle, then applied the motor principle to four-wheeled waggonettes, and finally evolved some useful types of motor-vehicles which, by 1895, were being widely adopted on the Continent and more especially in Paris. ”

“ Much enlargement or rebuilding of works is already proceeding, while manufacturers who have hitherto devoted their attention mainly or exclusively to pleasure motors are now adapting their plant, etc., to the making of commercial motors either instead or in addition. The demand for pleasure motors is limited; that for public service motors and motor-vehicles for traders is illimitable. ”

“ Furniture-removers, by resorting either, for small removals, to motors carrying pantechnicons, or, for large removals, to traction-engines and regular road trains, can now cover distances of up to 100 or 150 miles a day, the "record" down to the autumn of 1911 being 166 miles in a day. Brewers, mineral-water manufacturers, oil companies, coal merchants, pianoforte-makers, brick-makers and scores of other traders, besides, are all taking to the new form of street or road transport. ”

“ Laundry companies—to whose business a great impetus has been given of late years by the increasing resort to residential flats—find commercial motors of great service in the collections that have to be made on Mondays and Tuesdays and the deliveries effected on Fridays and Saturdays. ”

“ As far back as 1906 it was estimated that motor drivers alone in this country were receiving over £5,000,000 a year in wages, that the wages paid to men employed in the manufacture of cars and accessories amounted to nearly £10,000,000 a year, and that the total number of drivers and others concerned in motoring was about 230,000. ”

“ It is the duty of these patrols to give to members information of interest concerning the road, to warn them of any dangers on the highway, and to render them all possible assistance in case of need. They are able to undertake minor roadside repairs; they procure, in case of need, fresh petrol supplies from the nearest store; while each is qualified to give first aid in case of accident, much excellent service being rendered by them on the roadside not only to members but to the public. ”

“ For many years the crippling effect of legislative restrictions greatly checked the development of motor-car construction in this country. The Act of 1896 gave a stimulus to the building of pleasure cars, but French and German makers had the advantage until British manufacturers showed they could produce cars which would bear comparison with the foreign importations. ”

“ Then, while large traders having their fleets of motor-vehicles set up their own repairing shops, the needs of smaller traders with only two or three delivery vans are provided for by motor manufacturers or others who undertake "maintenance" on contract terms, thus saving such traders from all trouble in the matter of repairs and upkeep. ”

“ In all such instances as these,—more especially when cooked food is distributed from a central kitchen,—the superiority of the motor-vehicle over the horsed van is self-evident; while the further advantage is gained that the branch establishments can be devoted wholly, or almost exclusively, to the serving of customers, without any need for extensive kitchen arrangements or store-rooms of their own. ”

“ It will be found that, with the exception of the Liverpool and Manchester line, and of those lines formed solely for the purpose of conveying heavy materials on a descending road, railways are, at least, of very questionable advantage where there is the possibility of having a good turnpike road and steam carriages.... Rail-roads have a very formidable rival in steam communication upon the common road, and the latter is of vastly greater advantage than the former. ”

“ Trade expansion and the inefficiency of existing road-transport conditions combined to strengthen these proposals, and from about 1827 to 1835 or 1840 much enterprise was shown in the construction of steam-carriages, and more especially steam-coaches and steam-omnibuses of which various regular services, in London or in the country, were run with, at first, considerable success. The vehicles in question were designed mainly for the conveyance of passengers, and some of them attained a speed of over twenty miles an hour. ”

“ When, in the early years of the nineteenth century, general attention was attracted to the possibilities and prospects of using locomotives on the railway in place either of horses or of stationary engines, further projects were mooted for employing steam-propelled vehicles on ordinary roads. ”

“ In addition to these central organisations in London there are now Associated Automobile Clubs throughout the United Kingdom which show a great deal of local activity and offer many advantages to their own members. ”

“ Alternatively, the premises used for these branches need be no larger than is necessary to meet day-by-day requirements, whereas an independent trader, having only a single establishment, would want much more accommodation, involving higher rent, rates, taxes and expenses generally.
Once more the gain is on the part of the big trader as against the small one ”

“ The number of traction engines licensed by that body during the year ending March 31, 1911, for use in the county, was 101, as compared with only 37 in the previous year.
Action was called for all the more because cycling and automobilism have increased the use of the roads of the United Kingdom in general to an extent that probably surpasses their use even in the palmy days of the Coaching Era. At that time it was almost exclusively along the main roads between leading cities that the coaches went in such numbers ”