Transport: Traveling Salesmen

“You know what traveling salesmen are like,” says Mr. Edwin J. Carey of Manhattan. The U. S. public long ago concluded that no traveling salesman would ever get to heaven. The same tales are told about him that were told about begging friars in the 15th Century. But it is not his general way of life that worries Mr. Carey; it is his way of padding expense accounts. Cynical companies allow for it in his wages, as restaurants allow for waiters’ tips.

Mr. Carey is the youngest member of a family which runs about everything connected with Manhattan’s Grand Central Terminal except the trains—barber shops, beauty parlors, haberdasheries, and the Manhattan Hertz Drive-Ur-Self agency.

With Goodrich Murphy, an alert, up-and-coming young man in the passenger division of the New York, New Haven & Hartford R. R., he cooked up a scheme to revolutionize the traveling salesmen’s way of life, announced it last week to the press.

At present, most large companies own fleets of Chevrolets, Plymouths or Fords for salesmen’s use. But by Mr. Carey’s scheme, salesmen would make long hops by train, then use a Hertz car to make calls in the neighborhood. If a Manhattan salesman wanted to see a man outside of Bridgeport, he would buy a New Haven ticket at Grand Central, go by train to Bridgeport, where he would be met by a local Hertz agent with a car to be used for the day. Price of the car would be 9¢ a mile for the first 50 miles, 6¢ from then on (instead of Hertz’s customary flat 12¢ a mile). There is also a 75¢-a-day service charge. If a company prefers, it may be sent a bill at the end of the month for all the traveling its salesmen have done, thus cutting out much expense account chiseling. Any New Haven passenger can use the service, but Messrs. Carey & Murphy thought it would be chiefly used by salesmen. And they thought the salesmen would like it.

Mr. Carey quickly lined up Hertz dealers in eight New England cities on the New Haven right of way: Boston, Worcester, Providence, Hartford, Springfield, New Haven, Bridgeport, South Norwalk. (R. S. Robie, Boston dealer, helped Messrs. Carey & Murphy think up the idea.) At the end of the week, enough Auto-Train contracts had been signed by companies with men on the road to make Mr. Carey beam enthusiastically. “The response,” said he, “has been marvelous.”