It is not the first truck in the world, but at least it's interesting, to see the first in a long series of developments leading the concern to one of the most important truck manufacturer in the world.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages must not be transported a lot. People stay where they are, and almost all the goodsthey need will be made locally. It is the time of the guilds. Today we would call this 'violations of competition law'. Who intends to carry a certain craft in place, must marry the widow of the local foreman, even if he has already completed learning and his journeyman years working behind him.
Sure there are already trade routes, for example for a long time to China, but for this you do not need trucks, simply because of the road surface. It is the time of the great maritime powers, in the sequence Spain, the Netherlands and England. One must not overestimate the quantities. From far away goods are treasures, so expensive that only few can afford them. Only compare the size of the ships with present.
The travel speed does not changed since the Romans for 2000 years. One does not reach more than carriage speed. It was not until the railroad changed this situation on the European continent from the middle of the 19th Century. Simultaneously created a unity in the center of Germany in 1871, during the call to democracy is still not really answered. As another important prerequisite for trade fall the customs barriers. Still today can be seen on the islands in the Rhine ruins of relatively short intervals, former customs facilities.
But there are also requirements for increased products transport from the production side. First, the water energy and later the steam engine, which people drive into large factories. It is produced centrally located and in much larger quantities. Until the second half of the 20th century greater distances are taken over - expressly governmental wanted - by almost exclusively inland shipping and particularly the railway. The truck distributes the goods, the bus people. Here it replaces slowly horse and cart. Such a tendency can still be seen in the U.S., where one rather transports freight over long distances by rail and from coast to coast by ship (through the Panama Canal).
With the increasing use of the motor car ways must also be improved. Horses' hooves and possibly excretions before carriages with iron tyres provide less inferior requirements. However, the truck also possesses still far from air tyres. Here, first steel and then solid rubber dominate. And the speed exceeds that of horses and carts not necessarily. Only far after the beginning of the 20th Century, one begins to think about the so-called 'fast trucks'. But even with that are not meant the usual 80 km/h in Europe today, but rather max. 50-60 km/h.
So once again to make it clear: Trucks are fast 10 to 20 km/h shortly after the century. The transitions they have because of the different traction requirements. Only buses achieve twice the speed. In contrast to Otto engines in passenger and race cars, which also must prevail against electric drives at the turn of the century, at trucks these have to enemy only the steam engine, but with the advantage of immediate operational readiness.
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