Wasted Cubic

Four times as many motor trucks can be shipped to U.S. armed forces in Australia as are now being shipped, in the same num-ber of vessels. This result could be achieved by shipping the trucks "CKD" (completely knocked down) instead of to the Army's present specifications, which insist that the trucks be practically ready to roll. Boxes containing CKD vehicles are smaller and more tightly filled than those needed for assembled units. Furthermore, smaller packages stow to better advantage in hold or 'tween decks. Such a fourfold flow of trucks is no pipe dream. Detroit motormakers regularly shipped CKD to Australia before the war; on Lend-Lease shipments, they are doing it now. Springs are compressed, wheels and fenders nested, frames squeezed and stacked. Each shipment is a folded embryo of trucks-to-be.

But not when the trucks are U.S. Army trucks. They go aboard like planes or tanks—ready for use in any emergency. One reason is obvious: Suppose a shipment of CKDs to Rangoon, where there were adequate assembly facilities, had to be diverted after Rangoon's fall to Ceylon, where there are not? The CKDs would become junk. Anyway, speed looks more important than space saving to the Army now. Hence three-fourths of the "cubic" of many ships to Australia continues to be wasted. Last week Rear Admiral John W. Greenslade told Oakland shipyard workers that thousands of needed Army trucks have been stored in the U.S. for lack of shipping space. Some Australians think this system is crazy. Fiercely proud of their young, protected industrial development, they claim they still have available capacity for assembling trucks despite all-out production.

By crowding a bit, they think they could handle 12,500 additional CKDs a month. The U.S. Army is not so sure. But the commercial methods of G.M., Ford and Chrysler have such obvious advantages that new equipment for assembly lines is being stuffed in the ample interstices of the Army's Australian loadings. When enough equipment gets there, even the Army's trucks will be shipped CKD.