Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/892

 876

��Popular Science Monthly

���Formerly it took ten men a whole ten-hour day to do a single job, and inclined planes had to be built to load the upper boxes from, using rollers and crowbars. Now four men can load about forty-eight boxes a day, and, if necessary, one man does it.

��This Moving Van Loads From the Side

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��OUSEHOLD goods and

��I The lifting tackle travels on a track extended from loading \ room across track. One tackle performs the operation

Wafting Five Tons About as Though They Were Thistledown

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��^LL ready below there?" 'Yep, let 'er come."

There is a whirr and the rattle of a running chain, and a huge packing-case floats airily out of a second-story window and smoothly descends towards the flat-car which is waiting below to receive it. "Easy now — bit further — whoa! — back a bit — a-a-all right."

That is about the sum total of the operation of loading a packing-case con- taining five tons of motor-truck onto the cars for shipment, at the plant of one of the big truck manufacturers in Michigan.

The reason for the ease with which the thing is done is due solely to an ingenious bundle-carrier that the company has installed. There is nothing very new in its essential parts, for it is the regular chain-and- puUey type of purchase, but the application to special conditions is very interesting. The track on which the lifting tackle travels is extended across the track and into the loading room too. Conse- quently the cases are moved around, swung out, lowered, and everything is done with the same tackle. Four boxes are loaded onto one car.

��things that had to be moved for some considerable dis- tance, formerly went by railroad. Recent railroad congestion, however, and the difficulty of getting box-cars for anything that does not come under the head of war necessities, has brought home to many people the fact that it is often cheaper and handier to have their household furniture moved by vans. Even if it did cost a little more, there is a great deal gained in convenience, because the goods are actually taken right out of your own dwelling into the same van that con- veys it to your new abode. But as a mat- ter of fact, it is actually cheaper in many cases than to pay freight plus cartage.

As an aid to dispatch, a Los Angeles, California, moving man has equipped his truck-van bodies with side-moving doors that make it possible to load heavy pieces of furniture, such as pianos, right onto the van from the sidewalk. Formerly special tackle had to be used for doing this, so it is evident that a considera- ble saving in time and labor is effected,

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��Showing a side-opening arrangement whereby heavy goods can be loaded without aid of special tackle

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