CARS FOR COMMERCIAL TRAVELLERS.
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Numerous Firms who Employ Travellers are Still Waiting for Agents to Convert Them to the Use of Motor Vehicles.
By "Vim."
IF there is one business more than another to which the motorcar is pre-eminently suited, it is that of the commercial traveller, and yet it is a surprising fact that the gentlemen of the road are very slow in taking to the new form of locomotion. Of course, there are many firms who have long since provided their representatives with cars, and who have found the investment to be one of the best they have ever made; but, generally speaking, commercial travelling is astonishingly behind the times.
One has only to keep one's eyes open to observe the largo number of horsed broughams waiting outside the shops in large towns, the length of time that drivers in their threadbare uniforms doze on their perches, to realize that motor agents still have many potential customers for their wares. And this impression is confirmed when one takes the trouble to note the quantity of commercial travellers' trunks of samples strewn about the platforms of railway stations.
Perhaps it is hardly necessary to remind motor traders of the reasons why a car is to-day practically indispensable to a commercial traveller, but I will take the liberty of recounting a couple of the main points.
In the first Place, it is well known that nothing succeeds like success, and that nothing fails like failure. It is now a, common belief that all who can afford cars own them. If a traveller calls on a buyer in A car, the firm he represents is at once regarded as prosperous and progressive, and this stamps his goods as being fresh; on the other hand, the use of a horsed vehicle gives him and his firm an appearance of hoariness and seediness, which does not help him in persuading a buyer that everything he has to offer is right bang up-to-date and value for money. Little impressions make the sum of human judgment, and there is a .great deal more in this point than may be apparent on the surface. A traveller cannot afford to be ill-dressed; and he cannot afford to call on his customers in an antiquated conveyance.
In the second place, by giving a traveller a motor vehicle instead of leaving him to get about by horse and train, his range of action is enormously extended. He need no longer kick his heels or retire to a teashop to while away the time when the person he wishes to interview, is not at -home at the moment. He can goon. to his next appointment and return afterwards, or he can fill in the time by hunting up new customers. Under the old conditions of travelling, a firm's representative who has a fairly extensive ground to cover, somewhat naturally allots most of his efforts to his " easiest" customers, who are sure to see him directly he calls; and who. are almost certain to give him respectable orders. Given a car, however, he discovers several times every day that he -can manage, in between one appointment and another, to go a little out of the way and look up somebody on whom he has been intending to call, but has not had a chance to do so before. It is a common experience with wholesalers who have equipped their outside men with cars that a "live wire is thus able to increasethe return from his ground by anything from 25 to 100 per cent. So far as expense is concerned, it is ridiculous for any firm to compare the cost of the old-fashioned way of travelling with that of mechanical road transport. The only thing that matters is the ratio of the total amount of a traveller's salary, commission and expenses to the value of the orders he brings in, and, although the charges incurred by running a motor vehicle are considerable, yet at the end of a year they will be less in Proportion to the orders secured than would be the cost of obtaining a similar value of orders if any other means of locomotion were employed, assuming that the traveller is not a "slacker," In other words, to seeure a. like value of orders, using horses and trains, more travellers would have to be employed, with correspondingly increased expenses for transport and hotel accommodation.
The carrying of a large range of samples presents a problem, it is true, but a problem that is not insoluble. Some eoachlaiilders have lately been giving very close attention to designs for travellers' motor broughams, and they have produced several types which not only contain, cupboard and shelf mom for goods, but are also extremely smart in appearance. It is doubtful whether, with efficient co-operation on the part of headquarters, it is ever really necessary for a traveller to be accompanied by those huge cases of goods which often go with him on railway journeys, hut, where it is necessary, there is no difficulty in providing him with a vehicle big enough to take them.
A light char-a-bancs chassis, running on pneumatics, will carry a body capable of holding any reasonable quantity of samples, and—to take the argument further--it could be fitted up with a folding bed, etc., so that hotels could be cut out of the traveller's expenses, although he would probably miss the yarn spinning in the commercial room of an evening ! Perhaps, however, a better plan than running one large and composite vehicle would be to give the ty aveller a small motor brougham and let him have, in addition, a light van to carry his baggage.
Motor agents who include in their business activities the hiring out of cars, and who do not already include in their fleet a traveller's brougham, should investigate the 'conditions of their districts to ascertain whether there does not exist a demand for this type of conveyance. Many commercial travellers depend on local resources for their transport about the towns they are visiting, and would prefer to hire motor vehicles instead of hoised broughams. They generally hire on a time basis, and always want a steady driver who does not grow impatient ana bad tempered through being kept waiting outside business places. The agent who caters for this class of business.must in his charges take into consideration the fact that, as a rule, the mileage done is small, and the wear and tear on the car, therefore, slight.
A notice displayed in the local commercial hotels, intimating that a motor traveller's brougham can be hired from a garage in the vicinity, will soon bring together a useful connection amongst the gentlemen of the road, and may even lead to cars. being sold to their firms a little later on.