It would be reasonable to assume that motorised commercial vehicles came some time later than cars, considering how puny the very first cars were. Take the Benz Viktoria of 1893, for instance: its single cylinder put out just 3hp.
But you would be dead wrong: that very car was used to create the first combustion-engined bus in 1895 – the year of this magazine’s foundation – and shortly afterwards the first combustion-engined van.
And we can go back even further, all the way to the 1830s, when the first steam-powered buses were tried (at about 12mph) in London.
“It is evident that steam and petroleum vans are coming into more and more extensive use, and a large number of orders for them are being given out,” commented Autocar no fewer than 129 years ago. “Tradespeople understand the value of these vehicles, not only for the speedy and economical delivery of goods, but also as an advertisement.”
We were reporting the news that a big department store in Paris, Grands Magasins du Louvre, had taken a petrol-engined Peugeot parcel van on trial, to see whether such vehicles might be more economical to run than its 200 carts and 500 horses – which were extremely expensive.
Just two months later, we relayed: “The vehicle weighs [610kg] in running order and will carry a load of [480kg] at a speed of 9mph. It is in continuous use from 8am to 7pm. Were it horsed, the teams would have to be changed every four hours.”
It’s no surprise, then, that within a year of these petrol vans being in operation, the price of a Louvre delivery had fallen from 70c to 7c. Another major advantage was that the removal of horses halved a vehicle’s length, in theory doubling a city’s traffic capacity.
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“The streets in Paris are for the most part very narrow, and vans and buses take up so much space that the whole traffic is often at a standstill until these ungainly vehicles can extricate themselves. This would be certainly avoided if the traffic were much faster,” we noted.
Boiler power had started the race in pole position but fallen at the first hurdle, we explained: “Serpollet’s steam vans, constructed for [Paris clothes shop] La Belle Jardinière, were among the first to be used for the delivery of goods.
[However] the machinery occupied at least one-third of the vehicle, so that a great deal of valuable space had to be sacrificed – a matter of great importance to users who have to deliver enormous quantities of goods during the course of the day.”
Electric vans were also being developed, but it was found with disappointment that they could do only around 40 miles per charge.
