Country Stores Should Put Drive Goods to Buyers, Sept. 10, 1926

Country Stores on Wheels

Country stores everywhere are in a bad plight. People ride right by their country stores and come to town to buy for cash. Some do this because they seek a wide variety and fresher merchandise than some county stores keep. Others do it just to have an excuse to ride, to come to town. After spending all their cash in town they go back to the country-store for credit. The country merchant is up against it.

But there is a way out for the country merchant and the best of them will survive. One notes a vast improvement in the appearance of surviving country stores to-day; glass fronts ae replacing the old barred shutters, letting the light in. And with the light on their wares, the country merchants are keeping their stores clean and their stock in order. But this is not enough. The country merchants who make notable successes in future must give their patrons something of the same service that is available to the patrons of stores in town.

The wagons of the city bakery, the city laundry, the city ice factory, and the city ice cream dealer are already going out from town daily serving the rural trade for miles around. The successful county merchant of the future will not wait for the retail grocer in town to extend his delivery service into the country; the country merchant himself will deliver to his customers.

I expect to see country stores on wheels within the next few years. I expect to see enterprising country merchants sending their delivery wagons up and down the roads in their neighborhoods. Their wagons will be equipped with shelves and bins, carrying a general assortment of things that folk buy every day. In one end of the truck will be a refrigerator carrying butter, lard, sausage and other perishable merchandise. The rural housewife will not have to ‘phone her order to her grocer unless it is something unusual she wants; his store on wheels will stop at her door and she can buy as she needs. She will not have to take her butter and eggs to the store; the grocery will buy them at her door. In this way the rural stores are going to hold their own. Watch them.

From the editorial page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., Friday, Sept. 10, 1926

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