The Weekly Machen
The following article is the twelfth in a series by Arthur Machen for The Daily Express.
Wasted Van Power
Exchange that Would Fill the Empty Vehicle
by
Arthur Machen
October 31, 1918
Economy is the word of the moment—economy in food, economy in dress, economy in coal and lighting, economy in everything, to feed the guns and husband labour. Why not, therefore, economy in traffic?
Few people realise how intimately we are dependent for our daily life on street traffic. Goods, of all kinds, from food to fuel, are brought to our doors by vans, horse-drawn or otherwise. These vans go back to their depots empty. This seems a great waste of energy and space and time. The other day, in an omnibus journey of ten minutes, I counted the various vans in a West End road. I met thirty, and of these sixteen were returning empty. That is to say, for a mile or two—in some cases several miles—the man, the horse, the van were wasted.
Why should this be in such a time of organisation and inter-related effort? Would it not be possible to establish a van exchange? Suppose that a hundred vans were leaving in West Central district for various destinations. Would it not be practicable to inform their exchange, from which information could be telephoned to branch offices in the different districts, so that the vans, having unloaded, could be reloaded for the return journey?
Take the case of a van going from Messrs. Smith’s in the City to Hammersmith. The City exchange, being informed, would telephone to the branch at Hammersmith, who would arrange for Messers. Jones there to load up for a return. The financial part of the business could be settled on an equitable basis.
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darklybrightpress.com 
Fascinating – many thanks!
I suppose this was already (often) true of railway carriages and box cars (etc.), and of stage-coaches before them – and wonder what the subsequent history of van practice was?
Also striking to think of how much van traffic was horse drawn in late 1918 London (perhaps the more so if we compare his ‘hansom cab’ article – though its date does not immediately spring to mind).
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In terms of traffic in London, I think it is interesting to compare this article with a story Machen would write a decade later: https://darklybrightpress.com/opening-the-door/.
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