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January, 1925 space, Main deck at midtide comes ap- proximately at the level of the dock and freight is ports. taken aboard through three The freight destined for the hold is carried on to an elevator which is part of the ship equipment, and which drops down some 24 feet to the floor of the hold. Formerly this freight, handled large- ly by hand-~ trucks, could not be moved rapidly enough. The new system of trailers and truck tractors not only shows a marked saving in handling cost under normal conditions, but what is even more important, a capacity for speeding up under stress to two or three times the average loading rate. At Boston, freight is brought to the dock by truck from points throughout eastern New England. The approach to the dock is such that the bed of the average motor truck comes approxi- mately 18 inches above the dock platform which is an excellent height for trans- ferring boxes and packages from the truck to small trailers. The general scheme of handling freight is to unload directly from trucks to trailers, which trailers when the vessel is not in or is unloading, are used as storage space. The equipment includes some 100 of these trailers with a combined capacity for the average run of freight of 75 tons. This total capacity, of course, is not usually available for storage pur- MARINE REV 1 EW 15 FIG: :7—TRAINS OF AT poses as soine of the trailers are needed for unloading. Under normal conditions, when the boat arrives early in the morning, the general procedure is as follows: <A detail of 12 men with two industrial tractors is assigned to the work of un- FOUR AND FIVE TRAILERS ARE SUCCESSFULLY HANDLED MIDTIDE loading. Of these 12, seven are employed on the main deck and five in the hold. The trailers loaded with freight in the hold are pushed on to the elevators by hand, carried up to the main deck, and here are picked up by one of the tractors and hauled out to the space at FIG. 6—FREIGHT VARIES FROM LIGHT BUNDLES OF WOOL TO HEAVY BOXES OF PAPER OR OF CANDY