After spending the whole of one day with a ton
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brewer's Berna, a representative of the "Commercial Motor says :— " The roads were clearer than usual, largely on account of the absence of passenger traffic, and we arrived at Highgate, after cutting diagonally across North-east London, at 6.55 a.m„ 3utside the Brookfield Hotel. Now, it would take a three-horse team two hours to get to Highgate, and they would probably have journeyed there twice with a two or three-ton load, by four o'clock in the afternoon. As it was, we were back in the brewery at ten o'clock, and that after irritating delay, because we arrived too early for public-house managers who had only contrived to get to bed by 2 a.m., after the long business hours of the day before.
Compare the efficiency of delivery on this one particular trip as between horse and motor. We carried a load on the one five-ton Berna which would have kept two three-horse teams busy on that journey to Highgate and one team would have taken all day on the double journey. Our speed with the full load, which, as a matter of fact, consisted of eight hogsheads of ate, seven barrels of " bitter," r5 kils. of porter, to firkins of stout and porter, and two" Joeys of finings, was at times well over the statutory 12 m.p.h. It took about ten minutes to unload that miscellaneous collection of barrels, and the following two hours were occupied in waiting for the _an to allow us access to the cellars, and, when this was obtained, in delivering the full barrels and taking away the empty ones—to the obstruction of pedestrians. millTaking on board a further batch of empties, a straight run hick to the brewery was made, and there it was found that the mileage was about 40— considerably less than we had anticipated, Nevertheless, it has to be remembered that we had carried loads in excess of what would have been tackled by two three-horse drays. For a 20-mile journey, a brewer's dray is expected to occupy not less than 12 hours, and indeed the average speed of a brewer's dray-horse should not exceed 3 m.p.h., if the animal is to suffer no lasting strain.
It requires little more comment than the record we here make of the ability to deliver considerable tonnage over a greatly increased radius, to convince our readers of the superiority of motor haulage for by far the larger proportion of a brewer's deliveries. The three Bernas already in service have resulted in the sale of 12 horses, i.e., four three-horse dray teams. They do very much more work than the 12 horses did.