ROMANCE OF TRUCK CONSTRUCTION.

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 7059, 6 November 1929, Page 13

ROMANCE OF TRUCK CONSTRUCTION.

The romance lying behind the recent recelatiion in motor transport, which allows the load to be harnesed as an additional force in overcoming any obstruction in the path,of the truck is a wonderful one.

A farmer, who noticed his young son watching intently vain efforts to move heavy farm, machinery over a ploughed field, little thought that the boy was on the evo of a great invention. But the boy was thinking deeply. This was a few years ago. The Tesult of this boy ’s thought is a truck that has an axle drive that is unique in motor construction. The weight of the load is carried on the axle drive and upon the wheel axle.

> When, the truck meets with road re- > sisbance etich a. 3 hills, obstacles, ruits, > heavy mud or sand, the drive wheels > are momentarily retarded, during | which the drive axle climbs forward . and upward by means of the climbing ’ pinion gears on each end. The pinions ■ are enmeshed with the large circular cog track, and the truck load supported by the drive axle, necessarily moves forward and upward with the pinions. Thus the weight-of the load is gradually transferred from the vertical centre of the drive wheels to a point near the outer rims. Here gravity acting through the pinion gears to the wheels, overcomes the road resistance and the wheels move forward again at a normal speed. A wonderful invention that has been proved a great success recently on the loose land of Thorndon reclamation, Wellington. OIL EESOUECES. "The great source of benzine for many years will continue to be petroleum,” said Professor E. G. E. Ardagh, of the Univarait yof Toronto, in a lecture before the Eoyal Oanadi.au Institute in Montreal. "The report that the supply of petroleum is rapidly approaching exhaustion is not well founded. While it is true that the consumption of oil is increasing, production is , keeping abreast of the demand, and producers have anticipated increases in consumption t.o such an extent that the ; oil industry has at times found itself • with enormous stocks of oil on hand i that were difficult to market satisfactorily. ] "It is scarcely possible at this time i to make any estimate of oil remaining ] underground, in view of the fact that < over year we discover new pools of oil j in new territories, and are able to sink ;

much deeper wells to-day than in the past. ’ *

In. an official publication of the Standard Oil Company of America, a continued over-production of oil is predicted in U.S.A. It is stated that after taking care of increased consumption, there will be over-produced this year in the United States an average of 5,000,000 barrels per month. With crude oil in such libera lsupply, refiners in all districts disregarded statistics of the amount of finished products they would be called upon to supply in their locality, and increased their returns to a greater extent than was justified by the gain in consumption. The result was that throughout the first half of this year the primary problem of over-pro-duction of crude oil was carried forward into the no less embarrasing problef of over-production of petrol. Consequently, there was ailumuLated in this period in U.S.A., 8,400,000 barrels of petrol (358,800,000 gallons). In the first six months of the previous year the accumulation was 1,500,000 barrels. Over the corresponding period of 1928 the demand for petrol in the first six months of this year, including experts, showed an increase of 15.38 per cent.j but in the same time refinery runs increased 11.28 per cent., resulting in an increase in the total petrol supply of 19.03 per cent.