AT THE HEART OF THE ROAD TRANSPORT INDUSTRY.

Call our Sales Team on 0208 912 2120

FUEL TRANSPORT IN UNDEVELOPED COUNTRIES.

28th October 1924
Page 11
Page 11, 28th October 1924 — FUEL TRANSPORT IN UNDEVELOPED COUNTRIES.
Close
Noticed an error?
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.

Which of the following most accurately describes the problem?

A Brief Review of the Activities and Organization of a Prominent American Petrol-distributing Company who Own a Large Fleet of Motor Vehicles.

APROBLEM that will ultimately need solution if the backward areas of the British Empire are to be rapidly developed by means of the motor lorry is that of the distribution of supplies of petrol or other feel. So difficult is it to maintain cheap and adequate supplies of motor fuel in outlying portions of many of our Colonies that the development of their economic possibilities is very materially retarded. For this reason, if for no other, we feel that the distributing organization of the Continental Oil Co., a concern supplying petrol throughout six of the Rocky Mountain States of America, is worthy of close study. The area covered by the Continental Oil Co. is about one-third the area of the whole of the United States, and as many of the transport problems encountered in this region find their counterpart within the bounds of the Empire, an added degree of interest is given to the company's experience and methods of organization.

Notwithstanding mountains and deserts and tremendous distances which have to be negotiated, however, the company have not found it necessary to establish and maintain depots stocked with spare parts. This factor is of prime importance in developing remote areas and it might well be said that the Continental Oil Co. are justified in claiming that the organization they have built up on the Rocky Mountain slopes is worthy of a page in the history of the development and use of the motor lorry.

The system that has been built up has passed the experimental stage, for it has been in successful operation for nearly five years. Interruptions and failures in the Continental delivery service have been practically negligible, a remarkable fact when it is realized that the company's four base repair shops are 400 miles from a service station and that many of the lorries are frequently 750 miles away from the nearest repair shop.

The significance of such a plan is obvious. Successfully pursued, it means the saving of money that is ordinarily tied up in the purchase and stocking of parts for replacements. Reduced overhead costs, thus achieved, offer one ex-pladation of the reason why the Continental Oil. Co. are operating their fieet of motor lorries at a cost which is deemed remarkably low.

The contour maps of the country traversed by the lorries of the Continental Oil Co. are full of representations of peaks and valleys, indicative of severe transport conditions. Nevertheless, the line of the office charts, revealing the trend of lorry operating costs, is virtually horizontal, instead of pointing sharply upward after the first year of a lorry's life.

To illustrate the contour of the country over which the company's lorries travel, one performance by three 2-ton White vehicles might be quoted. These vehicles, while making emergency deliveries of petrol, were forced to run in first and 'second gears for 90 per cent, of a 42-mile round trip between Boulder and Rollins

villa, Colorado. Another 2-ton lorry e traverses a route that starts

5.00 ft. above sea-level, and ends on the slope of Pike's Peak, at a height of 11,200 ft. So mountainous is the terrain that 12 to 1 gear reductions are necessary on some of the lorries.

To maintain and direct the operations of a motor fleet confronted by such rigorous conditions of working and with its units scattered over such a wide area, the Continental Oil Co. have divided the territory into four-motor-equipment divisions, all of which are responsible to a general-office motor department in Denver. Base shops and headquarters are located in Denver for the entire State of Wyoming and the northern half of Colorado; in Pueblo, Colorado, for the southern half and western slope of Colorado and the entire State of New 'Mexico; in Salt Lake City, Utah, for the entire State of Utah and the southern half of Idaho ; in Butte, Montana, for parts of Idaho and the whole of Montana, the third largest State in point of area. A garage shop-superintendent" is in c27

Tags


comments powered by Disqus