While the advances of the automobile industry have been followed by the casual public fairly closely, and the pleasure car has become an accepted factor in transportation, the progress of the commercial vehicle has not been so marked. The impression of the early days of automobiling, when the gasoline car was a luxury and not an economic possibility, still exist in many quarters. The manufacture of the commercial vehicle has almost kept pace with the pleasure car in economical upkeep and in facile handling and reliability. The marketing of the cars remains a matter of educating the business world to recognize their economy. The biggest and best-known automobile manufacturers assert that the commercial vehicle is no longer an experiment, but has already proved itself vastly superior to the ordinary horse-drawn vehicle.

One of those interested in the commercial motorcar very aptly said yesterday: “When the passenger machine was placed on the market it was not to take the place of anything, but it was something entirely new. But with the freight and merchandise handling motor car it is different. The machine of this character has to take the place of horses and horse-drawn vehicles. It is simply a question of selling out the old stable and replacing the transportation with motor-driven vehicles. This, then, is the consideration. A merchant must be convinced that he can save money by sacrificing his horses and wagons and going to the expense of supplying himself with motor-driven vehicles.”

There are already in New York a number of firms that have discarded the horse-drawn vehicles for delivery purposes and have taken to the motor-driven vehicles. Department stories and breweries, large wholesale companies, and express companies have their motorcars, driven either by electricity or gasoline or steam, running through the city between warehouses and freight yards and between stores and places of dwelling, while a great many of the smaller establishments have taken up the delivery van of motorcycle type.

In the larger establishments the services of a light delivery van often save trips of motor wagons for small and urgent orders, the machine acting as an orderly, as it were, to the delivery department, and saving the irregular use of the less mobile heavy vehicle equipment.

In discussing the subject of changing from horse-drawn to motor-drawn vehicles for commercial purposes, H. F. Donaldson said yesterday:

“The average man of business must be impressed with the purpose of the commercial vehicle before that machine can hope to come into its own. He must know how to use the machine economically in the saving of time and labor in order to find it truly economical. It may be a long time before the motor vehicle is harnessed into making door-to-door deliveries of milk, for example, where two-thirds the time necessary on a route is taken up by the driver's racing around houses and flats and climbing back stairs with bottles of milk. Even the horse for the most part is too fast for such deliveries, and for the most part is kept standing.

“How to use the commercial vehicle economically in his business is something which the business man will have need to consider. Much of the economy of the machine must come from its saving of time and driver's charges. Delivery runs for the machine will have to be scheduled to give the machine a chance, doubling on the old horse routes, carrying greater loads at greater speed, and giving the wagon crew smaller responsibilities with the machine, to the end that they are fresher and quicker at distribution. Before the business man is ready for the motor vehicle he must have dropped the horse vehicle as a comparison; he has forgotten the horse in his relation to rapid transit in the cities; he must forget him in the new problem of transportation.

“The commercial vehicle has the capacity far beyond the horse. It is an insensate machine of fixed power under normal conditions of road and grade. That business man preparing to use it must figure to get all he can out of it in distance and time. To this end, at least, he must put out of his mind the delivery schedules which have been limited by the limitations of the horse. Installing a power machine that with a margin of time covers the route of two horse wagons at a saving of expense for one driver and one deliveryman suggests the saving that may be effected by the commercial vehicle under economical conditions. Moving a double quantity of load in half the time required by the horse.

“Why should the successful business man who takes advantage of all the scientific study which has produced rapid transit by rail and water fail to consider his own problem of transportation in a sane way? He will admit that transportation in general is one of the greatest factors in a modern civilization. How shall he consistently deny that in his own business relations with his own customers he has a transportation problem of his own to solve rationally according to the spirit of the times?”