The Trucks That Built America
So hello everyone.
Your Camp Counselor here.
Grab your coffee.
Pull that stump just a little closer to the fire.
I hope you enjoyed our little trip back to 1776.
I also hope your back has recovered from riding in that wagon.
Mine still hasn’t.
Now…
Let’s see where I left the Flux Capacitor.
WOOP… WOOP… WOOP… WOOP…
Perfect.
Still 1776.
Yesterday we talked about wagons.
Today…
Forget the wagon.
Forget the road.
I want you to think about one thing.
Distance.
We throw that word around today like it doesn’t mean much.
“My daughter lives about a hundred miles away.”
“I’ve got a meeting two hundred miles from here.”
“I’ll make a quick trip over to Dallas.”
No big deal.
We can climb into a pickup, turn the key, and be there in a couple of hours.
Now…
Throw all of that out the window.
You’re standing in 1776.
A hundred miles is no longer a pleasant drive.
A hundred miles is an expedition.
If you owned a farm and the nearest market was a hundred miles away, that wasn’t just inconvenient.
It could determine whether your family made money that year or barely survived.
If you owned a small store and your supplies came from a town a hundred miles away, every order became a gamble.
Would the wagon make it?
Would the weather cooperate?
Would the horses stay healthy?
Would the wagon break down?
Nobody knew.
Think about your kitchen for a minute.
Open your pantry.
Look at everything sitting on those shelves.
Flour.
Sugar.
Salt.
Coffee.
Beans.
Now imagine every one of those items spending nearly two weeks bouncing down muddy roads behind a team of horses.
Suddenly that trip to the grocery store doesn’t seem quite so ordinary anymore.
Distance shaped America.
It determined where towns were built.
It determined where businesses opened.
It determined where families settled.
Most people stayed close to what they needed because traveling very far was expensive, exhausting, and sometimes dangerous.
Today we choose where we want to live.
Back then…
Transportation often made that decision for you.
Here’s the part I find fascinating.
Nobody in 1776 was sitting around saying, “We need trucks.”
Why would they?
Nobody had ever seen one.
Nobody had ever imagined one.
As far as they were concerned, horses had always moved freight.
Horses always would move freight.
That was simply life.
But something was happening.
America wasn’t standing still.
She was growing.
New towns were appearing.
Farmers were producing more crops.
Businesses wanted bigger markets.
People were spreading farther apart.
Little by little…
The country was becoming too big for horses to keep up.
Nobody realized it yet.
But America had a transportation problem.
And she was about to go looking for an answer.
Until then…
I think I need to adjust the Flux Capacitor just a little more.
Because our next stop isn’t on a road at all.
It’s on the water.
Keep the coffee hot.