The following text may have been generated by Optical Character Recognition, with varying degrees of accuracy. Reader beware!

Cargo Handling Costs (Continued from Page 37) have just installed special machines for the direct transfer of grain from box ears to lighters alongside of the pier. Bulk building materials such as sand and gravel, gypsum, etc., are handled by grab-bucket hoists of either the tower or mast-and-gaff types. ‘ An extremely interesting develop- ment of the past few years has been in the handling of common building brick. Breakage and the necessity for stacking to economize in space required hand labor almost exclusive- ly, but two methods recently devel- oped practically abolish hand _ labor. One uses a container and cranes and is used where bricks are shipped in gondola cars, while the other uses no container but requires the bricks to be specially stacked so as to be han- dled by a special crane and tongs. This method is used for bricks com- ing in by lighters or barges. The first method used steel containers with doors at top and bottom each holding 3000 bricks. Twelve of these con- tainers fill a special gondola car, and they are loaded at the brickyard while standing on the car. On arrival at New York the car is spotted under a gantry crane and an auto truck with a 3000-brick-capacity body runs along- side. The crane spots a container over the auto truck and the bottom doors are slowly opened by a second hook on the crane, thus depositing the brick in the truck gently and with little breakage. The container is then dropped back in the gondola. Twelve containers can be unloaded in about 45 minutes, whereas to unload a box car containing fewer bricks by the old hand method took from one to one and a half days. A single crane operating ten hours a day could un- load in one day enough bricks to build 60 per cent of one wall of a building 300 feet high and 100 feet long, allowing for a normal number of window openings. This method of handling greatly reduces the cost, gives better service, and enables the railroad to handle the business with fewer cars and storage tracks. For the lighter or barge method the green bricks are built in _ special stacks as they come from the molding machine, and these special stacks are maintained intact throughout the manufacturing process and until de- livered to the building contractor. Each stack contains about 1500 bricks, and one or two stacks make a truck load, depending on the truck size. After manufacture is completed the 54 crane with the special tongs loads the bricks on the barge by stacks, and at the New York end they are un- loaded by similar cranes for delivery direct to trucks or to a storage pile where the stacks are still maintained intact. This permits. piling 90 bricks high instead of 22, the economic limit by hand methods. Much ground area for storage is thus saved. Three hun- dred thousand bricks have been han- dled from barges to trucks in a day. One concern formerly required seven barges to handle their business with hand methods, whereas they now give better service with three. These methods represent a real advance in the art of mechanical handling of ma- terial. Lumber is to a large extent being handled by machinery, usually cranes with special hooks, although there are possibilities of further improvement in handling of this material. Methods Used For Package Freight Now, turning to package freight, this falls into. two general classes, viz., large packages weighing over 3000 pounds, and small packages weighing under 8000 pounds. While package freight does not lend itself to mechanical handling as readily as bulk freight, an immense tonnage is being handled very largely by me- chanical means in the port, and the use of machinery has been increasing rapidly within the last few years. As long as the port remains to a large extent a lighterage port, float- ing cranes and derricks will be nec- essary, and a survey shows that there are 224 lighters equipped with power hoists of from 5 to 60 tons capacity. There are several larger than 60 tons for exceptionally heavy freight. While charges for the use of these heavy- capacity floating derricks are high and much time is consumed in towing them to and from the point where used, it is questionable as to whether many piers could justify the cost of a high-capacity pier crane to handle the tonnage of heavy freight passing over them, especially when the ex- pense of foundations and redesign of pier are taken into consideration. A number of piers have been es- pecially built and equipped within the last few. years for handling heavy packages up to about 20 tons such as boxed automobiles, knocked-down locomotives, boilers, ete. On one such pier the replacement of eight steam locomotive cranes with four heavy- capacity electric cranes reduced maintenance and labor costs by 55 per cent each, and the overall cost of operating the pier was cut in half. On another of these piers with two MARINE REVIEW—J une, 1927 electric traveling cranes handling principally boxed automobiles, it was reported that the cranes avoided all shifting of barges with consequent delay and expense of tugs, and that the capacity of the pier had been increased approximately three times over the old method of using steam- operated locomotive cranes. There are at the present time close to fifty electrically operated cargo jib cranes of between 2% and 20 tons capacity in the harbor, the majority of which have been installed since the war. In addition to this the railroads are equipped with pillar or gantry cranes for handling heavy loads between cars and trucks. Thus material progress has been made in the use of heavy package-handling machinery and econ- omies are being effected. Turning’ now to light packages, ships winches, supplemented at times by dock winches, are still in general use for loading and unloading ships. While there may be disadvantages to this method, the change to other methods will be slow for the reasons pointed out in the first part of the paper. However, improvements have been made in handling methods on the piers by the use of electric trucks and tractors with trailers, conveyors, piling machines, and power’ ramps. The economical use of this type of machinery is, however, handicapped by the size of many piers, while on others the short average movement does not justify their use; thus their universal use cannot be expected for many years. Several of the railroads have made quite extensive use of elec- tric trucks and trailers on their pier stations for handling car ferries, with very efficient results if statements as quoted below are typical. One super- intendent writes: Mechanical Aids for Light Packages “This freight-handling equipment has made a reduction in handling cost and almost eliminated dock shortages and misloading. One of its great ad- vantages is that freight is practically cleaned up at all times. This makes It possible to get floats away from the piers a few minutes after closing time for the receipt of freight. One of the advantages to shippers is the fact that there is practically no delay in releasing shippers’ trucks at bulk- heads. It is noticeable that the con- gestion which used to exist in front of railroad freight piers no longer exists when electric trucks are used, and in this way the truck operation has _perhaps benefited the shipping public even more than the railroad.” Another superintendent wrote as follows regarding the use of tractors and trailers and electric lift trucks with skids. “The - principal advantage of the mechanical equipment applies to the handling of forwarded business in