Motor Road Transport For Commercial Purposes
(Liquid Fuel, Steam, Electricity)

CHAPTER VIII PETROL VEHICLE RUNNING COSTS 25-50 CWT. LOADS Before giving present-day running costs for petrol vehicles of 30 cwt. loading capacity, it may prove helpful for purposes of comparison to outline briefly the work, together with schedules of operating costs in 1914, of a fleet of 25 cwt. vans run by a large London firm dealing in drapery, provisions, fumiture, etc. The annual mileage of the fleet at that time was 1,170,000 miles, the firm carried out all the necessary repairs to the vans, and the drivers were those who had previously driven the firm’s horse vans. The first two vans were put into service in the beginning of October, 1905, and each of these vans by 1914 had run a distance of over 150,000 miles. The firm had sixty-five vans, and the average annual mileage of each van worked out at 18,000 miles, or 63 miles every working day in the year. Some vans, of course, did less, while others did more ; a few running up to an annual mileage of 25,000 miles per van. Long Distance Delivery. The longest regular service which the firm undertook then was to Hindhead or Haslemere, this averaging 120 miles per day. This service was started by an occasional single delivery to a house near Haslemere. It was then run once a month, and as people living in that part began to know and appreciate this feature of quick and door- to-door delivery, a regular service was established fortnightly, then weekly, then three days a week. 60