1334 
made for Indianapolis. It reaches that 
city early Friday morning, about the time 
it would have reached Chicago had there 
been no diversion. 
Distributing a Car Lot 
Cities and towns which do not require a 
full carload of a given product are often 
supplied from neighboring car-lot mar- 
kets. Small lots of perishable goods may 
be forwarded in refrigerator cars devoted 
to local service. For small consignments 
of fruit and vegetables intended for 
neighboring towns refrigerator cars are 
run on regular schedules from Chicago 
and other large cities, and each car is 
assigned its own route. The service on 
one railroad will illustrate this traffic. 
This railroad sends out from Chicago, 
every night except Sunday night, 11 trains 
hauling such cars. One of these trains, 
leaving Chicago at 9:45 p. m., takes cars 
for 14 different routes; three of these 
cars are run only two days of each week, 
five of the cars are run on three days 
of the week, and six cars are run on 
six days. A car may be transferred from 
one train to another, making one, two, 
or more transfers before it reaches its 
destination. From this train cars are 
transferred at various points in Iowa; one 
car is taken off at Cedar Rapids, another 
at Marshalltown, still another at Ames, a 
fourth at Tama, while at Eagle Grove 
three cars are taken off and given to 
three different trains. At Belle Plaine two 
more trains are each given a car, and at 
Mason City another transfer of a car is 
made. 
Interurban electric lines and steam- 
poats help to distribute small lots of fresh 
fruit and vegetables from car-lot markets. 
In addition to the traffic on steam rail- 
roads, large quantities of this kind of 
produce are thus distributed from Cin- 
cinnati by trolley lines and river boats, 
while lake steamers assist in this work 
at Chicago. 
Shipments of less-than-carload lots of 
this highly perishable produce are apt to 
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PRACTICAL HORTICULTURE 
be more frequent in times of high prices. 
Under some conditions less-than-carload 
lots may be shipped all the way from 
Chicago to St. Paul, or even to Omaha. 
But, as has been said in the first part of 
this article, the regular way of transport- 
ing these fresh fruits and vegetables is by 
carload lots, shipments in smaller quanti- 
ties, except for short distances, being 
chiefly to markets where a larger quan- 
tity could not be sold. 
Conclusion 
The extension of better ways of distrib- 
uting fresh fruits and vegetables among 
the various markets and the improvement 
in transportation service have done much 
to reduce the waste in marketing, but 
there is still room for improvement. 
Sometimes a crop in a given region will 
be too large to be marketed promptly. 
There may be too few cars to carry the 
produce, and it spoils while awaiting ship- 
ment; or it may be loaded in cars and 
started on its way, but the increased num- 
ber of cars may be more than the rail- 
road can handle promptly, and a conges- 
tion of traffic may cause a delay of sev- 
eral days on the way. Or, even with 
quick and adequate freight service, the 
produce may yet fail to be well marketed. 
It is not always practicable for shippers 
to determine beforehand the approximate 
supply which a given city or town is 
about to receive, or to judge how much 
can be sold there at fair prices, and an 
error in the shippers’ judgment may re- 
sult in glutting a market. 
But in spite of occasional losses due 
to car shortages, freight blockades, and 
overstocked markets it is a widespread 
opinion among shippers that there are 
fewer losses on fresh fruits and vegetables 
now than there were 10 or 15 years ago; 
and the tendency of the present time is 
to reduce still further the waste in mar- 
keting. 
Year-book, 1911. 
MARKETING CANTALOUPES. 
Cantaloup Culture. 
See under 
