The Graham boys who live out on the Park road and run an up-to-date truck farm, trying to supply the markets of Charlotte with fresh vegetables in their season, are among those who believe that the men of this county who raise such things ought to take them direct to the retail grocers of Charlotte and let them sell to the households of the city.
Their argument is that it takes too much time to peddle out vegetables, that all the profit in the game is soon eaten up by having to run from house to house, with all the time which is involved, the uncertainty and the final risk of not being able to unload daily deliveries at all. Whereas, if arrangements are perfected with the retail groceries by which these latter take daily consignments of truck from the farmers of Mecklenburg, the producers can the better afford to take a somewhat smaller price for their commodities.
These men say that the retail grocer’s business is to do the retailing, that he is prepared to make deliveries at all hours of the day, that he runs his business on such a scale as to make it possible for him to deliver at a small profit and that, in the final analysis, the producer who arranges to sell through the grocer is the man who can afford to launch into this business with an assurance of a market.
What seems to be largely in the way of the development of the trucking business in this county is an uncertain market. Producers of vegetables generally discover that then one has a certain commodity to sell, everybody else has also and that if he undertakes to peddle out his stuff, it is merely a case of running from house to house without satisfactory results.
We have heard of many a farmer of Mecklenburg being forced either to give his stuff away late in the evenings or take it back home, after having spent a whole day in the city, with the loss of time involved. This is naturally intimidating and disheartening. Farmers can not be expected to take much interest in the development of markets here so long as such conditions prevail.
Whatever may be said to the contrary, it looks as if the argument submitted to this newspaper by the Graham boys would stand up, that the producers ought to make engagements with retail grocers to accept a slightly less profit for their commodities, bring them to town early in the mornings, return home and utilize the day in doing something else besides running to and fro through the streets of the city hunting up customers.
From the editorial page of The Charlotte News, Saturday, June 11, 1921
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