THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
SLOW AND POOR TRANSPORTATION OF NURSERY 
STOCK. 
By CHARLES SIZEMORE, Chairman Transportation Committee, American Association of Nurserymen 
Read Before the 24th Annual Meeting of the Western Association of Nurserymen, Kansas City, Mo, 
Outside of the conipany that I am witli, have no 
hgures or statements that will show the delay or 
slow movements of nursery stock. Taking oiir own 
shipments as a whole, for the X)ast sixteen years, in 
general have no complaint to make on the service we 
have received from the Transportation lines. Out of 
an average of twenty thousand shi])nients, annually, 
fully 95 per cent, goes through in i-ecord time and we 
do not consider it strange or anything out of the or¬ 
dinary that 5 per cent, of that number is delayed or 
movement is not what could he ex]^ected. 
Since being on the Transportation Committee of 
the American Association, comi^laints have reached 
me from various nurserymen about the slow move¬ 
ment of their shipments, but up to this time, have 
never been furnished with anything that would show 
the actual movement of such shixnnents, but it is 
more in the way of a general comxdaint. Desire to 
state here, as have stated before, that nurserymen, as 
far as possible, should route their shixnnents througli 
to destination. Unrouted shipments are hard to 
trace, and generally do not receive the j^rompt move¬ 
ment that routed shix)nients do for several reasons. 
For an examijle, say that we would shixi out of 
Louisiana on a certain date five or six thousand 
pounds of local shipments going to points in Okla¬ 
homa, that were located on the Santa Fe, Rock Is¬ 
land, Missouri Pacific and MK & T railways. If all 
of the shipments were routed via Kansas City in care 
of one line the tonnage would be enough that the 
railroad comi3any would very likely give it car ser¬ 
vice to the first junction xioint in Oklahoma, where if 
the shipments were unrouted they might, on arrival 
at Kansas City, be distributed equally between the 
four lines mentioned and thus would not be enough 
to receive car load service, unless there should hap- 
]ien to be other miscellaneous freight going in the 
same direction. 
Railroad companies have what might be termed a 
debit and credit system covering unrouted ship¬ 
ments. If the Union Pacific at Kansas City should 
deliver the Burlington quite a number of unrouted 
shipments, the Burlington in return, would deliver 
the Union Pacific a like proi^ortion of shipments go¬ 
ing the other way. Furthermore, should the Union 
Pacific fail to deliver a car or shipment to the Bur¬ 
lington at Kansas City, which was routed that way, 
they, according to the agreement, would be exjiected 
to give the Burlington two unrouted cars or shi])- 
ments to offset their failure to deliver the unrouted 
shipments. 
Nurserymen generally know there ai'(‘ some lines 
that make much better time than others and in sucli 
cases, they can readily see why, it would he to their 
advantage to route shipments via that line. All 
railroads, as 5 'ou know, have traveling rei)resenta- 
tives or solicitors and almost evei-y other employee 
is exjiected to look out for the interest of the road. 
Therefore when one of their congenial traveling re])- 
resentatives comes around and keeps in friendly 
touch with the agent or freight clerks it is no more 
than natural that the said agent or freight clerk will 
throw the hulk of the unrouted business to his line, 
regardless whether the time is as good as some other 
line. 
As far as i)ossible, you should keep in touch with 
your shipments esj^ecially the larger ones and by so 
doing you could so inq)rove the service, the smaller 
ones would be benefitted thereby. It is a well known 
fact, that the shixq:)er who kee])s close watch on the 
movement of his shii^ments will naturally get better 
results that those which are delivered to the carrier 
and left to their judgment. 
Believe nurserymen, to some extent, are respon¬ 
sible for educating their patrons to ex])ect too 
pronqit a movement for their shixunent with result 
that comxfiaint is made, very often before the ne¬ 
cessary time has elax>sed for the shiimient to go 
through. 
Some of our Oklahoma shixnnents went through in 
three days, some in four, some in five, the hulk of 
them in six or a general average of less than five 
days, which no nurseryman can conqilain of. Sev¬ 
eral of the Nevada shi])ments Aveiit through in 
eight days, the Virginia in eight and ten, AVest ^dr- 
ginia five to seven, etc. The above figures give you 
an idea of the service that we received from the 
'^rrans])ortation conix)any this Fall, and on which no 
complaint could x)ossibly be made. 
REFRIGERATOR CARS AND WHAT SHOULD 
THE MINIMUM BE? 
Stark Brothers conq^any received from their 
branch in Missouri and Arkansas twenty-five re¬ 
frigerator cai's the actual weight of which is shown 
below: 9G00, 12,000, 16,000, 11,700, 13,000, 
