From Our Berlin Correspondent.
Page 17
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I understand that the Deutsche Benzol-Vereinigung (German Benzol Association) has considerably over 4,000 tons of benzol available for motor purposes.
Two other important commercial concerns in the Berlin district have adopted the motor for business purposes: Spinellers Farberei und Waschanstalt, and the Kaufhaus des Westens. Spindler dyes and cleans for Berlin; the Berliner who requires any work of this kind done generally gets it done " bei Spindler," whose headquarters are at Spindlersfeld, near Copenick, immortalised by the exploits of the famous
" Captain." The van is for heavy work, having a carrying capacity of 3 tons ; its motor is a 4-cylinder N.A.G. of i8h.p. Engines of the same make have been put into a fleet of light delivery vans acquired by the new highclass universal store at Charlottenburg, (las Kaufhaus des Westens. With their tastefully-ornamented white bodies and relief-lettering, these Little vans wear quite an air distingue : their motors are 2-cylinder ones of 12h.p.
In their financial report for Iwo, the directors of the Allgemeine OmnibusGesellschaft, who had the unpleasant duty of notifying a drop of nearly 1:(9,000 in the net profits compared with 1905, drew attention to the heavy costs of the self-propelled traffic, the yield of which lagged far behind the calculations made prior to its introduction, and which had failed to answer expectations from a financial point of view. The application of the company for a higher ground-tariff than to pfennig,s, to which I have already referred, had prepared the way for the directorial statement. Even along the busiest routes and under the best possible meteorological conditions, whereby the outside seats could be occupied, it was a sheer impossibility to make the motorbus traffic pay at to pfennig-s (1.254.1.) for the whole distance between the termini. Now, however, that the company is entitled to charge so per cent. more for the entire journey and 1.25d. for intermediate distances aver aging some two miles, prospects are brighter; at any rate, the directors appear tolerably confident of extending their automobile traffic profitably on the new tariff-basis, and they intend to go ahead with the motorisation of their horse-lines, and with the establishment of new lines to be worked solely by self-propelled vehicles. Holders of old shares get 5 per cent., whilst 4 per cent. falls to the new shares, some ;629,500
being available for dividend (,1,39,500 in 1905). In the course of the year, the company's buses carried 128 million passengers, or 26 per cent. more than in the foregoing twelvemonth.
One of the most interesting pieces of body-work that I have yet seen in Germany is the body of the delivery van belonging to the Leipzic firm of Moritz Madler, manufacturer of trunks and leather goods. This body takes the form of a huge trunk, being an exact imitation of a special patent travelling-trunk supplied, by the factory. Friedrich Trebst, a Leipzic coachbuilder, is responsible for the construction of the carosserie, and, shrewdly enough, the Madler people have bound him over not to build a similar construction for any other firm of trunkmakers. Saxons are wont to pride themselves on their smartness, and the idea incorporated in the carosserie, which constitutes a peculiarly effective advertisement, without prejudice to the dignity of a big commercial enterprise, may certainly rank as smart. I caught sight of the van in one of the by-streets off the main road between Berlin and Charlottenburg, and had an opportunity of inspecting the chassis, which I found to have emanated from the Marienfelde branch of the Daimler Company. The chassis possesses a two-cylinder engine of 14h.p. In spite of the van's own weight, which stands at some 7ocwts., some remarkable
• journeys have been accomplished under extraordinary difficulties: The manager informs me, for instance, that the van covered the distance between Leipzic and Frankfort, circa 354 kilometres, or over 220 miles, in 26 hours, notwithstanding that in sonic places the snow lay more than three feet deep, considerable gradients had to be tackled, and a snow storm was raging part of the time. This journey, which would not assuredly have been attempted with a horsed vehicle, was performed without a single hitch. In 35 hours, too, the Madler van travelled between Frankfort and Berlin via Leipzic, a distance of 534 kilometres, Or about 334 miles, and gave no trouble whatever. One can imagine the sensation so original a van must have created in the small towns and villages lying along the line of route. I can answer for it that it attracted a deal of attention in Berlin.