It needs no wise man to see that the commercial vehicle has come to stay, and to do a large portion of the business now done by horses. The attempts to produce either light or heavy gasoline trucks during the past few years have not met with much commercial success because of the poor design, wretched materials, and inadequate strength of the cars. The firms who have been longest in this line of trade are now beginning to produce better cars, which give a fairly good return to the user, and promise cheaper service than horses where quick service and long distance are required. The gasoline automobile is excellent for light delivery, and is cheaper than horses at the present time. In carrying large loads of five tons or more the gasoline truck is again cheaper than horse haulage wherever the haulage exceeds two or three miles. Between these two vehicles the cars which carry from one to four tons do not figure out at the present time cheaper than horses, because they require the same man to operate them, and do not carry enough more than the horse wagon, or make a sufficiently long distance to equal the increased first cost.

If a good tire can be made which will show a small expense per ton mile the heavy gasoline trucks will leap into immediate prominence. In Europe they are increasing in France, England and Germany. In many cases steel tires are being used with the greatest of success, as they will be here. Rubber tires at the present time, and all expense of maintenance, depreciation and repairs figure out on our trucks from ten to twelve cents per ton mile, which is cheaper than horse haulage, according to the United States Government reports, which state that horse haulage varies from 16 to 24 cents, with 20 cents an average. This report was dated some time ago when the price of food, etc., was lower than at present.

Wherever hauls of 10 or 15 miles, or more, are to be made horse haulage is out of the question, and it is in this field that the heavy gasoline truck will find its first permanent place. It must be borne in mind that commercial vehicles must be much better made than the pleasure car, as they must run every day under very hard conditions, and do this with very small amount of repairs. In my opinion the motor truck will show a very large increase in the next couple of years.