Trailer

“ Objection to the trailer that it tends to shorten the life of the truck is hardly worth consideration. According to a careful analysis it has been estimated that the use of the trailer does not shorten the life of the truck by more than one year, which is of little consequence when the saving due to the size of the load that can be carried is taken into consideration. ”

“ The fact that the motor is separate from the wagon, or trailer, which conveys the load, and can haul a loaded trailer to its destination, leave it, and return with, or for, another loaded trailer, without waiting for the first load to be unshipped, not only makes this class of motor extremely useful to agriculturists and others, but it makes for greater efficiency, in a large number of cases, because the power unit is not allowed to stand idle during the loading or unloading operations. ”

“ The resulting vehicle need not be purely a tractor. In fact, we often find heavy lorries employed not only [Pg 21] to carry a substantial load, but to haul an additional lighter load in a trailer. As a rule, these trailers have iron-tyred wheels, but for service in which economy of engine power is more important than economy of money, rubber tyres are usually fitted, since they have the effect of reducing the power absorbed in hauling the trailer by about 25 per cent. ”

“ One can back around a street corner with his trailer in the rear without great difficulty, but to back one down a stretch of crooked mountain road to a turn-out so that a descending car may pass him would be beyond the power of the ordinary driver. ”

“ After the trailers are manufactured, many of them are shipped to other states for sale and use. The order in question undertakes to regulate and control the Trailer Company's relations and dealings with its employees engaged in the production and manufacture of trailers at the company's plant in Detroit and does not directly affect any of the activities of the Trailer Company in the purchasing and transporting to its plant of materials and parts for the manufacture and production of trailers or in the shipping or selling of such trailers after they are manufactured. ”

“ No commercial motor vehicle, trucktractor, trailer, or semi-trailer shall be operated on the public highway outside of the limits of an incorporated city or town with a load exceeding seven thousand (7000) pounds on any such vehicle or train or combination of vehicles; and no motor vehicle, commercial motor vehicle, truck-tractor, trailer or semi-trailer having a greater weight than six hundred (600) pounds per inch width of tire upon any wheel concentrated upon the surface of the highway shall be operated on the public highways outside of the limits of an incorporated city or town ”

“ After the driver had tried for several minutes to start the motor, muttering beneath his breath curses that seemed directed toward the battery, Grant good-naturedly got into our car and pushed them around off the driveway, onto the highway and on the road to our competitors.
Occasionally we get customers who are traveling with a house trailer. Their usual explanation is, "We wanted the comfort of a real cabin for once!" Sometimes we have customers who are so pleased with the accommodations that on a repeat trip they bring us a little gift. ”

“ Respondent is a corporation organized under the laws of Michigan and is engaged in the manufacture, assembly, sale, and distribution of commercial trailers and of trailer parts and accessories. The trailers are vehicles designed for the transportation of merchandise. Respondent's plant is located in Detroit and is the largest concern of its kind in the United States. Respondent maintains 31 branch sales offices in 12 different states and has distributors and dealers in the principal cities of the country. ”

“ They can be so racked up that one wagon will carry fifty-five barrels. A three-ton truck will carry forty barrels of apples and haul forty more on trailer. Such an outfit in one of my orchards makes five trips in one day a distance of four miles, traversing forty miles and carrying 400 barrels of apples. ”

“ You can see how a truck is loaded so that nothing gets smashed or spoilt; and how a truck Roadeo tests the skill of the men who drive the huge trailer rigs. There is lots of fun here besides useful information. ”

“ It was almost dark by this time, however I knew that the shipping department would be busy most of the night. The engine caught on the first revolution and I pulled out of the parking rank and backed slowly up to the platform. There was a relatively quiet area where the shipping dock met the receiving dock, I stopped the trailer as close to the dividing line as I could. I didn't open the rear door until all the workmen were faced in a different direction. Even the stupidest of them would have been interested in why a truck was unloading the firm's own boxes. ”

“ Instead of tearing the houses down, moving men just carried them away with the furniture still inside. First they raised the houses off the ground with jacks. Next a tractor backed a wide, low trailer up close to each house. ”

“ Every registered trailer in international traffic shall display its registration number at the rear. Where a motor vehicle draws one or more trailers, the sole trailer or the last trailer, if not registered, shall display the registration number of the drawing vehicle. ”

“ The doors are of mahogany, and are of the sliding type and are operated by the door operating device already described.
SIDE VIEW OF MOTOR TRUCK
Trucks
Two types of trucks are being built, one for the motor end, the other for the trailer end of the car. The following are the principal dimensions of the trucks:
Both the motor and the trailer trucks have been designed with the greatest care for severe service, and their details are the outcome of years of practical experience. ”

“ Only when a trail rope dragging along the ground or sea is employed does the sail offer sufficient resistance to the wind to sway the balloon's course this way or that. And a trailer is impracticable when navigating great heights. ”

“ They are fitted with tires eight inches wide and an inch thick, and an empty wagon weighs seventy-eight hundred pounds. In addition to this combined weight of wagon and load, amounting to about fourteen tons, is the trailer, as is called the water wagon, which it is necessary to attach to the train in order that man and beast may not perish of thirst on the journey. Altogether, the plucky teams have to haul through the yielding sands about twenty tons—nearly or quite one ton to the beast. ”

“ Everything can be reached at a moment’s notice and the entire outfit made ready for the road without any tiresome packing in a few seconds. The trailer body is of hard wood tongued and grooved and covered by 24-gauge sheet metal. The roof is made of collapsible framework of quarter-inch steel tubing which by a simple operation drops down into retaining sockets, allowing the sides of the bungalow to fold up and the roof to collapse over all without disturbing the contents of the bungalow. ”

“ Nevertheless it seems probable that new methods of operating the motor truck transport, and possibly new types of trucks or trucks and trailers will be developed so that freight traffic over many roads will be of considerable tonnage and an established part of the transportation system of the nation. ”

“ All makes of trucks are more or less alike in general construction, differing only in minor details, so that the personal whims of the buyer will largely determine the kind he will select. It is advantageous to have as long a distance as possible between the driver’s seat and the bunk over the rear axle, in order to allow more of the load to be carried by the truck, and less by the trailer, giving better traction to the drive wheels, but necessitating extra strong rear springs and axles. ”

“ Sidelong glances enabled him to make out the movements of his trailers without awakening their suspicions. He could observe that they had branched off from one another, aiming at a clear space, where they planned to head him off. ”

“ A brisk, bright-faced young fellow glided from their midst, cleared an obstructing truck with a clever spring, stood ready to greet the locomotive and express car as they parted company from the passenger coaches, and ran thirty feet along the siding to where the freight-sheds stood. ”

“ A New England husbandman was driving up a steep hill with a load of provender and gardening implements in his motor truck. In a rough place on the grade the tail-gate slipped from its catches and, item by item, the cargo spilled out. The farmer steered along oblivious of his losses. ”

“ Long processions of trucks rolled up and down it, giving motorists more time than they desired to look about. All around them, as the car moved slowly on, were warehouses, new and old cheek by jowl together; commission merchants, their produce spilled over the sidewalk; noisy freight yards, with spur-tracks running off to shipping-rooms of all descriptions; occasional empty ground used as dumps, littered with ashes and old tin cans; over all a thousand smells, each more undelectable than the last. ”

“ The shops, which are of large dimensions, are built in a quadrangle, enclosing a large area or open space, which is employed as a yard for material or finished goods as may be accidentally required. The first place into which the stranger is shown is called the Truck shop, and will accommodate three hundred carriage builders and carpenters. Adjoining it is the Boiler Makers’ shop, or, more properly, a shop for workers in plate-iron, for boilers are not made in the establishment, but iron doors, navy casks, and wrought iron railway carriages are produced in this department. ”

“ It could be attached to a simple horse frame for transport into the fields. There the farmer would load his produce, and when the body was full it would be returned to the road, picked up by a crane attached to the tractor, swung on to its carriage and wheels, and taken away to join other cars. By making the bodies of such dimensions as to fit three into an ordinary railway truck, they could be entrained easily. On reaching their destination another tractor would lift them out, fit them to wheels, and trundle them off to the consumer. ”

“ The part the motor truck will play in the future can only be estimated, but it seems clear that the most promising field is for shipments destined to or originating in a city of some size and a warehouse or store not on a railroad spur, and especially when the shipments are less than car load lots. ”

“ A more varied class of vehicles than we met from time to time would scarcely be seen on any other road in the country. There were stylish city carriages and buggies, grocer and express wagons, great lumbering market trucks laden with barrels of early cabbages, spring wagons, drawn by mules, piled up with crates from many a strawberry field in the interior, and so, on the descending scale, till we reach the two-wheeled, primitive carts drawn by cows—all converging toward some Northern steamer, whose capacious maw was ready to receive the produce of the country. ”

“ Nothing is more common than a cart or a truck at the door of a hostelry. Nevertheless, the vehicle, or, to speak more accurately, the fragment of a vehicle, which encumbered the street in front of the cook-shop of the Sergeant of Waterloo, one evening in the spring of 1818, would certainly have attracted, by its mass, the attention of any painter who had passed that way. ”

“ When it comes to delivering the lumber to the consumer a wagon known as a dolly is of great assistance for collecting materials to load on the delivery truck. Most retail yards now deliver their lumber by truck even to a distance of 15 or 20 miles. ”

“ For more than an hour one day I was held up in a truck and watched a dozen experts, with block and tackle and "caterpillar tractor" move a twelve-inch monster from its hidden foundation up a slight incline toward the roadway. ”

“ Trucks which haul nothing but milk and cream are quite common. The farmer leaves his full cans of milk or cream at a specified place, usually a platform at a level with the truck floor, on the roadway. The driver of the milk truck picks up the full cans, leaving empties in their place. Or he may pick up the full on his way to the market, creamery, or railway station, and leave the empties on his return. ”

“ When a horse or an ox was seen drawing a truck, the driver was always found at the side, or leading it by a rope; it seemed to be the custom not to ride in a loaded vehicle. Cabs are not seen in the city, ricksha pullers doing the hack work. A great many of the public streets are too narrow for a carriage to pass through. Men do most of the trucking. ”

“ She found herself getting out of her small camp bedstead at night, to peep through the blinds, and to watch a clumsy, over-grown goods train which went blunderingly and noisily along at about a certain hour, every truck in a temper with its neighbour, with sometimes a set fight between all when the engine tried to check them. ”

“ The Cars for this railway will have their trucks constructed alike, and it is a simple matter to transform a car from one style into another. Figure 79 shows a top view of a truck. For the bed of this cut a three-eighths-inch board twelve inches long by two and one-quarter inches wide, and, after rounding the ends as shown in the drawing, cut a mortise at A and B two and three-eighths inches from either end. ”

“ If the owner desires to do his own hauling of the feed from the railroad and the other necessary trucking he would, of course, have to keep more horses, a team at least, or an automobile truck. Where only one horse is kept, this trucking must be hired done. ”