TRUCKS ... TROUBLE ... AND TRIUMPH.
By Wayne G. Broehl Jr. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1954. 226 pp. $5.50.
Much as the average automobile driver may resent and deplore the swarm of huge trucks on the highways, he must admit that without them the economic activity of the country would be subjected to enormous strains if indeed it were not forced to a jarring stop. The problem is not to get rid of the trucks, but to see to it that they and the highways are matched, and that the truckers pay their share of the community tax burden. To answer these points knowledge is needed of the trucking business - how it developed, how it is carried on, and what it does. Dr. Broehl presents here a pioneer piece of research on these lines.
The fact that it is a pioneer book is striking. Here is an industry that employs more men than all the other forms of transportation combined, and moves over one-fourth as many ton-miles as all the railroads. The study is specifically of one concern, the Norwalk Truck Line Company, an enterprise operating over 4,200 miles, with 42 terminals, nearly 3,000 vehicles, and over 3,000 employees. Its revenue is over $25 million. Were it a railroad, it would have been written up long ago. Dr. Broehl is obliged to say, more than once, that he is. only showing what needs to be done in further study, of other trucking companies and of the industry as a whole.
The story he tells is really a multiple one. It is the history of the Norwalk, Ohio, firm from its start in 1924, the business biography of its founder and president, an analysis of the methods used in developing and running the business, and a background sketch of the whole industry, with something on state and federal regulation. The need of covering so much made it hard to be interesting and understandable. Dr. Broehl handles this problem with considerable success.
This book has been chosen by the editors of the Business History Review, the Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, as the 1954 business history book dividend.
