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Dock Management Progress Section How Successful Dock Operators Have Met Problems of Giving Best Service to Ships Weakest Link in Transportation BY MAJOR E. C. CHURCH Transportation Engineer, Port of New York Authority T IS safe to say that the expense or the economy of any system of transportation, whether by water or by rail, depends almost solely upon the efficiency of its ter- minal operations. The big costs are in the terminals. The voyage of a ship, the line haul of a railroad, are respec- tively the cheapest forms of transportation that exist. It may also be said that once cargo is stowed in the hold of a ship or loaded in a freight car the length of the trip is no great matter. The costs of transportation, the money required to move goods from where they are to where they are wanted, rep- resent today a huge share ~ of the total of human expenditure, and anything that can be done to lower them will give great benefit to business and _ afford much relief to living condi- tions. The first thing to get clearly in mind is the fact that this total cost is the sum total of a great number of separate expens- es incurred ‘between the door of the shipper and the door of the consignee wherein by far the greater part are made up of “in- cidentals’” and terminal ex- penses both direct and in- direct. Under “incidentals” are included the cost of labor, materials and space for packing crating and often waterproofing the marking weighing and checking of shipments and all losses from loss, theft, damage and delay. The items that go to swell the terminals account are many and varied and while dis- tributed among the dif- ferent parties to the trans- action though often hid- den are there just the same. As freight seldom _ origi- nates on the line of the car- rier it generally has to be trucked to the wharf or station. This operation in itself, if the haul be long, MAJOR ELIHU C. 50 or what is worse if there be delay, can easily assume for- midable proportions. Only recently due to lack of ade- quate platform space on which to receive freight at its station a certain railroad delayed trucks bringing freight a sufficient time to make the cost of that delay to the shipper equal what it cost the railroad to haul the ship- ments almost 400 miles. A while ago some goods were shipped from San Francisco to Brooklyn. On arrival they were taken to a warehouse. Shortly afterwards they were telegraphed for to fill a sudden demand for them on the coast. They were taken out of the warhouse and returned to the pier. The cost of trucking to and from the warehouse, absolutely neg- lecting all storage charges exceeded the water rate from New York back to San Francisco via _ the Panama canal. When goods are received by a steamship company or a railroad the costs of weighing, check- ing, trucking on wharf or station and loading into ship or car is often a con- siderable proportion of the total rate received for mak- ing the entire movement. The carriers’ burden of ter- minal costs does not end there. The use of costly docks, or in lieu of that the item of pier rentals, the interest on idle investment and the other expenses in- curred during the turn- around time of a ship in port must be added. From the railroad standpoint their terminals often repre- sent almost half their cap- ital investment. Engine terminal mileage on some other roads equals 40 per cent of engine road mil- eage. This, together with ithe money involved in de- lays to cars, especially time taken (or lost) in loading and unloading equipment makes a striking total. CHURCH On arrival at destina-