CUBE STICK FOR AIR CARGO

Grey River Argus, 17 April 1948, Page 4

CUBE STICK FOR AIR CARGO

A cube stick, which is expected to save tens of thousands of dollars of formerly lost revenue, is being put into use by United Air Lines for the measurement of air freight. Airlines which move large quantities of freight have suffered lost revenue in the past through difficulties in determining cubic dimensions of shipments where, due to bulk, charges are assessed on a basis of one pound for each 300 cubic inches of space used. Frequently the size of the package is out of proportion to its actual weight. As it is entirely impractical to measure every shipment, or to exoect shippers to show all dimensions, only light and bulky boxes have been checked. The checking process is difficult since there has been no quick method of determining cubic dimensions. Five months ago, an air cargo specialist with a penchant for mathematics, Melvin T. Brockman, of United Air Lines, started to work on a> method of determining at a glance the cubic bulk of a passage. The result is what he calls a cube stick — simply a yard stick combining a logarithmic scale. The freight agent quickly measures the three dimensions of a package, adds up the three logarithms, and has the dimensional weight for assessing charges. Brockman has obtained a copyright on the stick which has been tested and approved and will soon be used widely. He previously, invented a slide rule for checking freight rates and charges in other phases of shippng and designed an airbill whicn was the forerunner of the uniform airbill now used as a standard shiping document by many airlines.