Indian trails winding through the forest provided the first roads, looking back some three hundred years, as already mentioned. Once these were widened to become a one-chop road, a horse and rider or a horse loaded with goods could travel long distances and offer a rudimentary freight service. With the development of two-chop roads, wagons replaced packhorses and larger freight shipments were feasible.
As migrants from the Atlantic seaboard states made their way across the Alleghenies, shippers and businessmen formed wagon trains to transport the goods that new settlers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other states were anxious to purchase. The Conestoga wagon was the first efficient freight carrier and led to the introduction of the Prairie Schooner, a covered wagon, used by those crossing the Great Plains. The land was flat. Therefore the absence of roads was not a serious deterrent to their passage. Those heading for the west traveled in groups or wagon trains for protection from Indian attacks, as did the supply wagons that serviced isolated military camps and forts.
By 1840-50 most of these trains had disappeared in the east and now wagons were used primarily for short-haul trips or by peddlers who called on customers in remote areas. Trains picked up most of the long-distance freight traffic, and the same transition occurred out west once the transcontinental railroad had opened and other railroads began to crisscross the states.
When automobiles first appeared on city streets around the turn of this century, most trucks were still horse-drawn, except for a few powered by steam or electricity. By 1904 the approximate 700 electric or gasoline driven trucks in the entire United States were hardly a threat to the traditional horse and wagon. Solid rubber tires and poor springs ensured such a rough ride for these trucks on the unimproved roads that some goods were easily damaged and long-distance trips were not practical. As is still true today, batteries provided a very short range for the few electrically driven trucks.
World War I gave the trucking industry the impetus it needed as the government awarded numerous contracts for various types of trucks to be used by the army here and abroad. Now that truck operation had become fairly reliable, pneumatic tires had replaced solid rubber, more powerful gasoline engines were available, and more roads were paved, trucks gradually took their place in both short- and long-haul cargo transportation and their number had grown to more than 600,000 by 1918. Finally, some forty-odd years later, the interstate highway system was gradually blanketing the whole nation, and trucks could compete with railroads in earnest.
DISASTER FOR THE NEW HAVEN
As late as the 1950s, huge train yards were busy places in the afternoon. Noisy switch engines put the long freights together so that they would be ready for their scheduled departures in the evening. Some of the faster trains received imaginative names like Red Ball Express, Overland Limited, Merchants Dispatch, or Evening Mercury. Tower workers, conductors, engineers, and dispatchers paid more attention to running these trains on schedule than they did to unprofitable passenger trains. Nevertheless, the future was not bright for the rails. The nation's 40,000-mile interstate highway system had been creeping over mountains, through valleys, and over rivers as it laid mile after mile of smooth four-lane roads and opened exciting new prospects for truckers both large and small.
The thing happened to the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in New England was typical. Before the New England Thruway (Inter-state 95) opened in the late 1950s, numerous fast freights snaked their way along the heavily traveled New York-Boston Atlantic coastline route. Then with the opening of Interstate Highway 95, which enabled trucks to roar between these two cities in four hours, more and more freight was diverted from freight cars to trailer trucks. Lower rates and better service enticed more and more shippers to try the trucks.
Except for heavy shipments of bulk materials such as grain, coal, oil, lumber, livestock, chemicals, and liquefied gas, the railroads were forced to relinquish most of their business to the trucks. Eventually short-haul railroads like the New Haven went into bankruptcy. They then lost their identities altogether as they were forced to merge with other carriers in order to survive.
Freight Categories
There are two kinds of truck freight: Less Than Truckload or LTL, and Truckload. Less than truckload means a cargo that is insufficient to fill a large truck. Companies that provide LTL service have smaller vehicles that make several stops to pick up enough freight to fill a larger tractor-trailer truck. This truck then carries its cargo to a control terminal where the packages are sorted, and other trucks haul the packages to terminals in various cities. There, they are sorted again and put on smaller trucks for door-to-door delivery.
The second category of freight, truckload, refers to a truck that picks up a complete load of goods from one shipper and hauls it directly to a single company or location in another city. Most of the new companies entering the trucking industry are interested in the truckload business because it is less expensive to operate and may be run with nonunion labor.
THE TRUCKING BUSINESS
Make no mistake: trucking is a huge business, one of the most important in the transportation field, taking in approximately $110 billion annually. Some forty million trucks are on the roads in the United States and three million in Canada. In 1993 motor trucks hauled 28.7 percent of domestic freight traffic compared to 37.8 percent by railroads, 14.9 percent by inland waterways, 18.7 percent by oil pipelines, and 0.4 percent by airlines. In the United States the industry employs more than seven million men and women, of whom almost three million are drivers. Since trucking companies are found in almost every part of the United States, there is real employment opportunity for those seeking careers in this business.
Back in 1930, Galen Rousch, an attorney, and his brother, Carroll, founded a small company in Akron, Ohio, which they called Roadway Express. Today the company's headquarters are still in Akron, and it has become the number-one trucker. It grew by buying up smaller companies and then extending its routes throughout the country. With approximately 25,000 tractors, trailers, and trucks, and as many employees, the company takes in over a billion dollars in revenue annually. In a recent year it accepted over twelve million shipments, which it handled in its terminals in more than 400 cities.
