PROBLEMS OF THE HAULIER AND CARRIER.
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More About that 100 Tons per 100 Miles, Showing How Economical it is to Use .Big Units.
T DIGRESSED in my notes in last week's issue of 1 The Commercial. Motor from the problem under discussion the previous week, namely, that of discovering how best. to carry a hundred tons a hundred mileS every week. In solving • this problem we are mainly concerned with the size of the units of the fleet employed. In fact, we found, after a brief preliminary discussion, that the problem resolves itself into a consideration of that point only, bearing in mind at the :same time the importance of the factor of speed.
Twenty Tons at a Time.
For the first part of the investigation I 'chose as the vehicle a 12-ton, six-wheeled steam wagon, working in -conjunction with an 8-ton trailer. This may he de:scribed as a 20-ton unit, and, to perform the allotted task, involves five complete journeys per week. I showed hat three such units would be needed, two of them doing two journeys per week and the :third only one journey. I worked out costs and !arrived at an estimated cost of operation of the vehicles :alone of £93 Os. 9d.
No allowance was made in these calculations :establishment charges, which, in a business capable of handling a job of this size, could hardly be less than £5 'a. 'Week and might very well be £7. A fair approximate figure, therefore, for , the all-in cost of doing this work with the three vehicles selected will be £100 a week or £1 per ton, and at that figure, of course, there would he no profit for the owner.
Allowing for Profit.
He would, I should think, expect to gain at least £15 a week, and would probably hope to get £20. At any rate, we may safely take it that he would prefer £20 and would try to get that. Add this £20 of profit . to the total cost and we get £120 as being the proper charge, which is equivalent to 24s. a tin.
It may be of interest, before we go farther, to work out this figure on a basis of a charge per mile. The total distance covered by the three vehicles in transporting this 100 tons is 1,000 miles, since two of them
• do two journeys of 200 miles each (including the return • journey) and the third one journey. That means that
• the charge works out at 2.5. 4.80. per mile,
The ton mileage is 10,000, being the product of 100 tons and 100 miles. The cost per ton-mile is, therefore, 2.88d.
Efiminating the Trailer.
Now, suppose we try to do without the trailer and see if we get any better results. The defect of the trailer, as I have shown in previous calculations of this kind, is that it decreases the speed of the whole outfit considerably, thus affecting the possible weekly
mileage. The latter is a very important factor in consideration of cost,. and it may be that by eliminating the trailer we shall be able to speed the vehicle S up to such an 'extent as to make it 'Mere. economical to do Without them. The higher the useful weekly mileage the lower the cost per mile, other factors under consideration being equal.
Take, then, the six-wheeled steam wagon without trailer. The new vehicle has a capacity of 12 tons, so that for the Conveyance of 100 tons per week 9 journeys will be necessary in that period. These will consist either of 8 journeys each involving a full load of 12 tons and a ninth journey carrying only 4 tons, or 9 journeys each with a load of 11 1-9th tons.
The first bull point in favour of the simple vehicle as opposed to the machine with trailer is scored when we come to discover how many machines will be required. The hundred-mile run will, with a single machine, he covered in a day. Each machine, therefore, will he ca:pable of dealing with three loads per week, so that three machines only will be required for. the work. The first cost will, therefore, be £3,900, so that an immediate saving of ROO is effected in this instance.
The cost of operation can be estimated as follows:— Tyres will be £160 a set and assuming that a set lasts 16,000 miles £2 worth of tyres will be worn away on each round trip of 200 miles. Fuel consumed at the rate of 10 miles per cwt. will involve a consumption of a ton of coal, plus, say, 1 cwt, for getting up steam21 cwt. in all, which is equivalent to an expenditure of 47s. 3d. if coal is 45s. a ton. Oil and grease will be, -say, 45. 90., maintenance 19s., and depreciation 27s. 60. The total running costs for one vehicle for one round journey are, therefore, £6 18s. 60.
The weekly standing charges will not be very much less than those set out for the vehicle and trailer. The wages bill will be the same. There will still be 76s. for the driver and 65s. for • his mate, giving a total of £7 Is. The maintenance allowance for -these men will he a little less, since they will only be away from home three times a week instead of four. That figure will,
therefore, be 45s. instead of f..3 a week. The annual licence for the vehicle will be NO. which, at 50 weeks to the year, is 24s. a week. Insurance will be 12s., interest on first cost 24s. 6d. and rent and rates 165.; total, 113 2s. 6d., as against £14 Us. fid. for the vehicle with trailer.
That standing charge is taken at per week, so that
the cost per round journey is £4 is. 6d. (one-third of £13 2s. 6c1.). The total operating cost is this amount, plus 1.6 18s. 6d„ giving a total of £11 6s. per journey. As there are nine of these journeys per week, the total cost is £101 14s., as against 193 Os. 9d., the cost of operating with 20-ton loads carried by 12-ton lorries drawing trailers. The advantage of cost, therefore, lies with the vehicle and trailer as compared with the vehicle alone, although the difference is not very great and might easily be eliminated if the single vehicle
turned out to be slightly more economical than I have assumed in these estimates. At the same time, a similar criticism may very well be made of the figures given for the vehicle and trailer, so that, on balance, we are probably perfectly correct in taking it that, for this job, a vehicle and trailer would be the better investment.
Assuming that £120 still remains the contract figure for the load, the contractor who accepted that figure and used only the vehicles without trailers would have to be content with a little less profit. It might be that he would prefer to do so rather than to invest in trailers for which he might have no other work. it should not be overlooked, however, that in comparing the bare figures of cost we are not taking into consideration another factor In favour of the trailer outfit, Inasmuch as, with the trailer outfit, one of the three units is only used for half the week and is, therefore, available for any extra work which may come along and is a stand-by in the case of temporary disablement of any one of the three.
Comparing the charge per mile of these three single vehicles, as against those given for the vehicle and trailer, there is a considerable difference, owing to the fact that the mileage covered per week is 1,800 instead of 1,000 and. the charge on a mileage basis is, there fore, only Is. 4c1. a mile. The charge per ton-mile is the same, since the ton-mileage still remains, as before, the product of 100 tons multiplied by 100 miles, which Is 10.000 ton-miles.
How to Save £2 a Week.
If a cat may look at a king, then a small haulier may look at a large one, and if; as maybe, he does no find much entertainment in that, then he may take the alternative choice and examine the other man's figures of cost, thereby learning some useful lessons. When I wrote my previous article dealing with the limits of accuracy passible when estimating costs and showing how a very slight improvement in cost of operatfon could be made to have a large effect in the total weekly profits I had not seen those figures relating to the year's working of Coventon's, Ltd., which were published on page 755 of the issue of The Commercial Motor for January 10th. The firm are probably known to many of my readers, as there must be few who have not seen their six-wheeled Scammell vans at some time or other. The figures to which I refer gave some particulars of the work done by that concern during 1927, and amongst them there are some details concerning petrol, consumption which are very striking indeed, in that they show how very important an extremely small saving may prove to be. The average petrol consumption on these six-wheelers is indicated in the following mileage figures for the four years named :-1924, 3.66 m.p.g.; 1925, 3.76 m.p.g.; 1926,
4.04 m.p.g.; 1927, 4.10 in.P.g. • These figures are interesting in the first place as showing the consumption which may be expected on that type of vehicle. They are more interesting in that they indicate that it is quite possible to effect really important savings in petrol consumption, provided the matter is dealt with energetically. An article showing how these savings were effected would, I am sure, be of very great interest indeed. They are also very intriguing if we convert them into their equivalent saving in pounds, sbillings and pence.
-In a further paragraph it is stated that the meaning of the figures is that "if the consumption of petrol pe-7 mile for 1927 had been the same as for 1924, the total consumption of fuel for the year would have been raised by 15,500 gallons." Now, the actual mileage is not stated, but it can easily be calculated from the figures given. It Ls approximately 533.000. The cash saving, if we assume 10d. per gallon for the petrol, is £645. If the small haulier doing, say, 9,000 miles a year could effect a -similar saving of petrol, he would
gain rather more than £100 per annum. S.T.R.