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Bristol Offers 3,500,000 Tons Annually for Transport
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A Port That is of Rapidly Growing Importance as a Centre for Road-transport Operation. A Survey of the Class of Traffic Dealt With and a Statistical Indication of Its Volume
BRISTOL, where this year's Royal Show is to be held, is approximately 100 miles by road from Birmingham, 120 miles from London, and 150 miles from Manchester and Liverpool. The activities of the port have grown rapidly of late and the tonnage handled is now close to 3,500,000 annually.
The principal imports include bananas (7,000,000 bunches per annum), grain (1,000,000 tons per annum), petroleum spirit (600,000 tons); timber (120,000 tons), frozen meat and foodstuffs (60,000 tons), oil seeds (60,000 tons), paper (30,000 tons) and tobacco (30,000 tons). The exports total approximately 80,000 tons per annum.
Every one of these commodities, and others not mentioned, is handled by road vehicles—work which, judging by the layout of the docks, is sometimes carried on in face of difficulties. The docks are not laid out in a manner conducive to ease of negotiation by road vehicles. Bananas in bulk are B40 handled by rail, except in the case of local distribution, when road transport is employed.
An important section of the port's activities relates to grain. The extent of this traffic is indicated by the fact that no fewer than 80 electric motors and nearly seven miles of conveyor bands are needed for handling between its acceptance from incoming steamers and its transference to vehicles.
The grain is unloaded by pneumatic elevators, transported thence by conveyors and elevators to automatic machines then again by other conveyors and elevators into silos. From the silos the grain is sacked off to a predetermined weight by automatic machines. The sacks are then knotted and loaded into lorries at a series of platforms in the warehouse walls.
The rail track intervenes between the
sacking machines and the road-transport loading platforms, and communication has to be established by drawbridges crossing the gap in the flooring along which the railway track runs. It follows, inevitably, that when railway wagons are being loaded, road vehicles must wait! Refrigerated produce is delivered into transit sheds and sorted on to trolleys, which are conveyed by escalators into lifts, which descend through airlocks to vast refrigerating chambers on the lower floors. From this stock deliveries are made to insulated motorvani, via loading platforms at one end of the refrigerator building: Petroleum products are Usually unloaded by pipe lines and stored in the
familiar huge tanks. They are distributed, as one of our illustrations shows, in lank wagons.
As is well known, one of the biggest tobacco manufacturers is actually located in Bristol, and for the
oL this commodity .extensive use is. made of Inechanical-horse •vehicles. They are employed to convey the tobacco from Wharves to bonded stores and thence to the factories, Timber, too, is a big source of
traffic for road transport. It is interesting to note, again, how favourable local timber merchants are to the use of the mechanical horse, which is employed both for moving the timber from the dock-side to the stores and again from the stores to the premises of local merchants. As many as four trailers per motive unit are employed on this work. Such materials as oil seeds and paper serve as more or less regular return ,loads for many hauliers who, long ago, introduced the custom—recently made much of as a railway scheme—of establishing distribution depots at their headquarters, where they can take oil seeds, paper and grain, storing them against instructions for retail distribu
tion at the wishes of the principal merchants concerned.
Hauliers will do well during the period of the Royal Show, when many of them will, no doubt, find occasion to visit Bristol on business irt_connection with the exhibition, to investigate the possibilities of the port as a means for extending their activities.