TRANSPORT TIPS FOR TRADESMEN.
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Partitalarly Addressed to Those Who are Replacing Horsed 'Vehicles by Mathis, Contemplating So Doing:
TlIE Show at Olympia will be the first occasion on which : British-built eleCtrie vehicles have figured seriously in a representative commer7 ciai vehicle exhibition. This may seem rather curious, until one remembers that more than seven years have elapsed sin& gib last Show.
• Electric Vehicles at the Show.
In considering the claims of the electric ,vehicle, the trader must remember that he is dealing with something'built for a very specific) purpose, and not intended to compete in all spheres with the petrol van. The electric vehicle is essentially a. specialist and, as such, certainly ought to have advantages in its own proper place over vehicles of more general utility. The sphere of the electric vehicle is municipal service, transport in urban areas, and delivery. 'work from urban areas over rounds of limited radius. The shorter the round and the more numerous the deliveries, the more probable is it, on the whole, that the electric vehicle will have the advantage over the petrol van.
Before deciding on the electric, it is very necessary to make full inquiries as to the sources from which current will be obtainable the rates likely to be charged, and the degree of dependence that can be placed on local power stations or garages for assistance in respect of upkeep and maintenance. On an open road, the electric van is slower than the corresponding petrol van. In traffic, this is not necessarily Oie case, because the electric can be accelerated rapidly and is, in every sense, easy to handle and control. It uses no current at all when deliveries are • -being effected, whereas, if deliveries occupy upwards of 50 per cent, of the working day, the amount of fuel ',used while the petrol vehicle is standing still is quite considerable. The electric van causes no annoyance by reason of noise while standing outside the house. ,-It is free from smell and can be made very attractive in appearance. It can be safely driven by any man , of average intelligence and used to handling horsed vehicles, after a very few hours' training. If proper arrangements are made for maintenance and upkeep, breakdowns on the road should almost never occur. In general, full consideration of the merits of the electric vehicle is to be particularly recommended to traders who have hitherto adhered to deliveries by horsed vehicles, because the bulk of their deliveries had to be effected quite near home and, therefore, the daily mileage was too small for the petrol vehicle to show up to advantage.
Payment on Delivery.
The system of acxepting payment on delivery of goods is one to. which a fair number of retail traders ,still adhere. It may, however, be argued that it is a ...relic of the days of horsed vehicles and of the times .1. when such vehicles, and the labour employed in connection with them, were cheap. The taking of pay' ment on delivery of goods is a process which involves ' constant delays. The writer suggests that, on the average, it means a delay of not much less than five i _minutes n respect of each delivery. The chances are . that the servant who answers the door has to go and , hunt for somebody to give her the money for which the van man asks. When it is forthcoming after some delay, there is quite likely to be further delay, owing to the difficulty of giving correct change. In plenty of cases, the person who has ordered the goods is not at home, and the money has not been left With the Servant. Consequently, the goods have to be taken , back, and delivered. :again on another day, which means duplication of work and. waste mileage, is well as further delay. In the -old days all these -delays „ may not have amounted to much in pounds, shillings. ' Now that a motor vehicle of considera,b/e value is fused instead of cheap hors.ed van, and.when the ,cost of labour has so Ditch increased,--it stands to reason that the expense of maintaining the system has gone up enormously. Probably, in most cases, it is maintained merely because customers are used to it, and, in many cases, the changed conditions which would justify a change of method have not been fully taken into account. The system is certainly an undesirable one from the trader's point of view, and, if all the leading firms in a given trade and a given locality were to agree together to abandon it, there would be no serious difficulty in the way of dispensing with it altogether.
Lubrication.
In a statement of operating costs, the oil and grease used for lubricating the engine and other working parts of a motor vehicle represent a cornpara,tively trifling item in the total expenditure. Proper lubrication is, however, absolutely of the first importance, and the fact that, as regards expendilure, the item is in any case a small one should in itself hesufficient to prevent motor owners from making ill-judged attempts to secure trifling economies by the use of inferior lubricants: Some few years ago, a motorbus service was established in a big city on the Continent, the vehicles being of .first-: class British make. Those responsible for running the service believed that they knew all that ought to be known about their job, and they were dis.. gusted to find that, after a very few weeks, practically every vehicle in the fleet began to give serious trouble. An expert was sent out from the manufacturers and the whole trouble was promptly traced to the fact that those responsible for the operation of the buses had entirely disregarded the manufacturers' advice as to. the selection of lubricants. Incalculable harm had thus been done and, as a matter of fact, the service never picked up from its bad start and was ultimately discontinued. ..In this, case, the choice of lubricants was, of course, not merely faulty, but wrong to the point of stupidity. The example will, however, serve as a warning. There are plenty of other people asking for trouble of the same kind, if not on the same scale, by using some lubricant which is offered as "just as good at a surprisingly low price. The safe thing to do i to 'stick to what the manufacturers advise. The exact quality of lubricant that is best for one engine is not necessarily best for another. Various lubricants are variously. affected by a given degree of heat, and oils that appear to be of the same consistency when at normal temperatures may behave very differently from one another under the influence of the higher temperatures necessarily obtaining in engine cylinders. The manufacturer will be only too glad to advise as to the proper choice of oils and greases, both in winter and in summer, because he knows to what a degree the, record put up by his vehicles will d.eriend on the choice.