Education by Motorbus.
Page 43
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IT required a stout heart, allied to an intimate appreciation of the ultimate possibilities of the commercial motor, to enable many of us to feel other than despondent as to the effects which the comparative failure of the London motot.bus in 1906-8 would have upon the whole industry.
The metropolitan motorbus, unsuitable in much of its design, untried in such searching service, was but a few years ago a sad warning to prospective users all over the world. The fault was not with the machine; it was rather with those rash exploiters, who, reeking little, put hundreds of unsuitable machines on to the London streets, with little consideration of their ability to do more than to figure numerically in the prospectuse,s and balance sheets.
Such a course was fraught with danger to the whole cause of industrial self-propelled traffic ; in effect the hands of the commercial-vehicle timepiece were for a period very materially put back. Throughout 1909 would-be. users were thoeoughly scared.
But as if to make recompense for the far-reaching and malign effect of its quickly obsolete predecessors, it is the London motorbus of 1912 which may be, held largely responsible for the present state of relative prosperity of the industry. The 2500 silent and reliable units of the great L.G.O.C. fleet serve daily to educate the cosmopolitan crowd which nowadays lives in London or else frequently visits it. The lesson now offered to the individual every day in the streets of the metropolis, and to a less extent in Paris, Berlin and New York, is of incalculable value. The '' 13-type " must have sold many hundreds of vans and wagons and lorries all over the world.
Of the indisputable ability of the motorbus to compete economically with other means of transit, in regard to passenger conveyance, we deal at some length in the pages which follow.
We also have something to say of the motorcab and its cost of running. Not the least remarkable feature of this branch of the industry is the manner in which, in very many instances, old-time disagreements, as between master and man, seem likely to recur. There have been ceaseless trouble and little profit as a result of the common contract of a percentage for the driver, who pays for his own petrol and appropriates all else he can. Petrol has risen; tips have materially dropped, and early misManagement is now telling its insistent tale. In very few cases anywhere is the large motoreab company a paying proposition. The driver-owner is the solution to the motoreab problem, .
THE EDITOR.