Start of test run between truck and horse-drawn wagons

View of horse-drawn wagons and truck under American Express Company sign. Typed on back: "From left to right: some horses, a horselaugh, and a rickety ancestor of today's powerful motor trucks. The occasion was a test run involving an express company (prior to occurences outlined on page 6), in which the Automobile Club of America attemped to prove that horses would run a poor second as far as efficiency was concerned, to the waddling motor wagons of the period. Seventeen of these early trucks puffed and rumbled for six days over 16 express routes devised by the ACA for the test run. Loads varied from pig iron, to department store packages, to veal, to giant kegs of beer. Number 9 shown above, was a friction-drive Consolidated Motor Truck, vintage 1904. Trucks came through the test with flying colors, making more deliveries, better time, travelling farther, and, to boot, occupying half the ground spece required by horses and wagons, but many years passed before approval of the truck ousted the horse." Handwritten on back: "Clubs-Automobile Club of America, interior, 1908."