Boxcars of Oranges on Every Railroad Siding, Dec. 7, 1923

Oranges on Every Railroad Siding. . . Why Couldn’t We Hande a Lot of Our Potatoes That Way?

On a railroad siding in every considerable town in North Carolina these days one sees car loads of oranges and grape fruit from Florida or car loads of apples from Virginia and Western North Carolina, sold at retail by the peck or bushel measure. Did you ever stop to think why this is so? Why these oranges and apples are sold out of box cars on railroad siding instead of going to the trade thru the usual channels of jobber and retail dealer?

Well, the reason is, the growers can’t always sell their product at a profit to the jobbers. The jobber takes their choice fruit at a fair price and offers them little or nothing for their orchard run. And so instead of throwing their orchard run on the limited market supplied by the jobbers, the growers load up freight cars and send these cars to little towns all over the country, selling direct from the cars. Shipping in this way they are spared the expense of barrels, crates and packing, and they get the lowest freight rate. Rent on box cars is cheap, say a dollar a day for every day the car is on the siding. That’s all the store rent the grower has to pay, the ?? on the freight car until the last orange or apple is sold from the car.

Eastern North Carolina potato growers might study this phase of the fruit business with profit. There are times when growers here can’t get freight, drayage and packing charges out of their potatoes while there are hundreds of small towns in North Carolina, Virginia and Pennsylvania full of folks who would eagerly buy potatoes at a fair price. This newspaper has reported potatoes selling at a dollar a peck in Asheville, N.C., in August when potatoes were selling on the wharves here in Elizabeth City for a dollar a barrel., How eagerly Asheville ?? would have gone to a railroad siding to have bought potatoes for 50 cents a peck at such a time.

This is just a suggestion. It pays to be worth money to our potato growers, or it may [not be] practical. It is at least worth thinking about.

From The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Dec. 7, 1923