The Truck Driver's Long Shift
A local trucker works 24 hours straight to haul apples, highlighting the transition from horse-drawn wagons to the motor age.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Beginning at 8 o’clock Tuesday morning and working straight through 24 hours to 8 a. m. Wednesday, J. W. Trigg of Hanford with his auto truck was able to load out two cars of apples from the H. W. Lemcke and L. E. Bishop orchards, that had been sold to the J. M. Perry company of North Yakima. There were 1545 boxes in the two cars. Things have changed since Dad was a boy. Time was when the only way to get fruit to the station was by team and wagon and when the ranch was any distance at all from the shipping point, the task was a laborious one. Not only that, but the pneumatic tire and heavy springs on the auto relieve the fruit from the jolts of a rough road, and the fruit reaches its destination in far better condition.
“Beginning at 8 o’clock Tuesday morning and working straight through 24 hours, (no 8 hour day on this job) to 8 a. m. Wednesday.”
This story captures a pivot point in labor and technology: the intense, unregulated hours of early motorized transport replacing traditional agricultural labor methods. The 1916 perspective on 'modern' convenience and speed is a direct ancestor to our own obsession with supply chain logistics.
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