The getting of new and additional business, however, is only one of the important considerations that the merchant must always have in mind. He must also keep what business he already has by maintaining the standard of his goods and by giving his customers satisfactory service. One of the first essentials in this question of service is promptness and exactness of delivery. In this the merchant must depend very largely on the transportation companies, and therefore a brief study of these facilities will be especially in place at this point.
Transportation is an essential item in the problem of distribution. If you wished to drink a cup of coffee and found that none could be had except in Brazil, you would begin to realize how much the steamship company and the railroad company have done in transporting and hauling it where you might buy it. The same is true of our oranges from California and Florida, our apples from Washington and Oregon, and our grain from the Middle States. In fact, in the case of many products the most important item is not growing them, but bringing them to market, since the transportation charges are often much greater than the actual cost of producing. Thousands of barrels of apples rot on the ground every year because their quality does not warrant the high transportation charges, the lack of transportation rendering them useless. In a smaller measure, the delivery wagons in our cities and towns are essential to us because they save us the trouble of carrying our purchases about. Thus, the element of transportation enters into our lives every day, saving us inconvenience, bringing to us necessities that we demand and luxuries that we like, and, at the same time, increasing the price of commodities.
Common carriers, as transportation companies are called, are of two general classes:
1. Those operating on water--the steamship companies. 2. Those operating on land--the railroad companies.
Steamship companies operate three general kinds of lines: (1) lines consisting of the largest and fastest steamers which carry only passengers, mail, and valuable parcels; (2) lines using slower steamers which carry both passengers and freight; and (3) lines employing vessels--steamers, sailing vessels, and barges--which carry only freight. The cost of hauling cargoes by water is in every case less per mile than that of carrying the same quantity of goods on land. It costs, for example, over four times as much to carry a bushel of wheat from Chicago to New York by rail as it does to carry it across the Atlantic. It is for this very reason that the traffic on our navigable rivers, the Ohio and the Mississippi, and on the Great Lakes is so heavy. Whenever a cargo can be shipped as well by water as by rail and there is no hurry for delivery, it is shipped by water. However, because so much of our freight must be rushed from place to place, the railroads get the bulk of the inland traffic.