THE TRAFFIC FIELD PART I THE INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT J. W. COBEY Traffic Manager, National Cash Register Company, Dayton, O. THE TRAFFIC FIELD PART I THE INDUSTRIAL TRAFFIC DEPARTMENT CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Traffic Management-Progressive and Nonprogressive Practically everything to have value must be moved from places of abundance to places of shortage or demand. Traffic work or traffic management is concerned with this distribution, effecting it by the most expeditious means and at the least expense. The increasing importance of adequate transportation facilities, the intelligent employment of those available for use, and common-sense railway regulation are issues vital to the hour. The solution of these questions can be accomplished only by a recognition of the fact that the success of each of the several factions concerned, the railroad, the shipping public, and the government, is to a great degree contingent on the success of the others. In the past the shipping public and those concerned with the operation of our railroads have resembled hostile camps, with a public utility commission acting as the vacillating ally first of one faction and then of another. Fortunately, the "public-be-damned" type of railroad official, the "soak-the-railroad" type of shippers, and the narrow-minded, nonprogressive public utility commissioner are types that are rapidly disappearing. They are no longer welcome in the forum of modern business efficiency. Rapidly supplanting these types is the broad-minded and progressive technically trained man who rigorously demands his own rights and respects those of opposing interests. The bigger men in the industrial traffic field do not look upon the transportation companies as private interests separate from their own, to be exploited at will. Instead, they now regard them as a plant auxiliary or affiliated industry, to be maintained and administered with an efficiency that will enable them to assemble and distribute the wares of industry with a minimum amount of inconvenience and expense. This new attitude has resulted in creating a new profession, that of scientific traffic management. From the proficient graduates of this school must come the needed reforms in the greatest transportation machine that has ever been developed in the history of the world. The title of "traffic manager" has been a much used, and at the same time a much abused, title. This abuse is not confined to the general public, but in many cases the traffic manager himself is ignorant of what his title implies. In the minds of many, for example, the industrial traffic manager must be an ex-railroad man of more or less thoro training, who has a somewhat superficial knowledge of freight rates, some familiarity with packing requirements and classification rules, and the ability to audit freight bills with more or less exactitude. This view is entirely too superficial and even incorrect. Many of the foremost traffic men are those who have had no previous railroad connections. The value of practical training of this kind is not to be discounted, but the idea or suggestion that it is a controlling factor is to be combatted vigorously. In an address before a chamber of commerce, a speaker made this very significant statement: The business which rates its traffic manager as a statistical clerk or as a glorified truckman is hopelessly behind the times; and so long as the need of a traffic manager is based upon the idea that a rather limited knowledge of traffic is all that is essential, that the location of an occasional overcharge on a freight bill, or the collection of a few loss and damage claims. is all that is required, the work and necessity of a traffic manager have not been recognized or appreciated. Let Big problems require the efforts of big men. us consider the magnitude of the plant that confronts the traffic manager of to-day. The population of the United States is estimated to be in excess of 100,000,000, distributed over a land area of approximately 3,000,000 square miles. To appreciate the vastness of this land area, comparisons are essential. Austria-Hungary does not cover the state of Texas. France is contained within the states of Arizona and Utah. Belgium accounts for a small corner of the state of California, while |