Wild North America 1846

Chapter 561 Pier 9

The next day
The sound of pots and pans in the courtyard and the energetic shouts of the children kicked off the day, which seemed to be full of vitality.

Li Cha's breakfast consisted of a big bowl of cornmeal porridge, plus two half-pound stickmeal steamed buns, and a plate of pickles pickled with cabbage stalks, which he ate cleanly.

Feeling the warm feeling of fullness in his stomach, he lit a Havana cigar, sat on a stool with his legs crossed and sipped tea leisurely, thinking about where he planned to go for a walk today.

There is no meal provided at noon in the courtyard, because the old men who go to work will not come back at noon, and the commute is too time-consuming.

Whether it's a factory or a dock, workers won't have much time at noon.

So when I go to work in the morning, after breakfast at home, my wife will prepare a few steamed buns or noodle pancakes, and bring the leftovers from last night, or two pickles, and I will make some for lunch.

Workers who do manual labor can't do without food in their stomachs.

Only dinner will be richer.Stir-fry two dishes and some peanuts, and drink two cups of wine with the noodles to eliminate the fatigue of the day.

Ordinary people's life will not be full of fish and meat. It is good to improve two or three times a week. This is the most simple life.

It's not that ordinary people can't afford it, but the Chinese have always had a tradition of thrift and thrift. The money saved is used to buy a house, send their children to school, make clothes, and marry a wife.
The consumption in Chang'an, the imperial capital, is relatively high, and ordinary people rarely go to restaurants in their daily lives.The three or five friends who come here are all the mothers-in-law at home who cook a few dishes and drink some loose wine to entertain the guests.

A friend weighed a pound of stewed chicken feet, stewed pork liver, stewed pork head meat and other meat dishes on the street, and brought them over. It was a happy day with wine and meat.

It was almost 9 o'clock in the morning when Li Cha went out.

Not long
He came to Pier No. 9 by the sea. Chang'an Bay Area, the imperial capital, is also known as San Francisco Bay Area. In a narrow sense, it includes Chang'an and the Pacific coastline. Eleven large cargo terminals have been built successively, with different functions.

Pier 9 is mainly a bulk cargo terminal. It is a large seaport terminal. There are a series of unloading berths along the seashore, a wide concrete terminal, a hoisting operation area, a warehouse area, etc., and the facilities are quite complete.

The adjacent Pier 10 in the north is a dedicated iron ore terminal, which is mainly used by several large iron and steel companies. It has built special iron ore conveyor belt lines, stockyards, steam engine grabs and other special facilities.

The northernmost Pier 11 is a dedicated Royal Navy Pier, which is the town of Oak Bay, tens of kilometers north of Chang'an.

The town now has 4 8-ton berths, 5000 [-]-ton berths, a large naval ship repair plant, three naval stations, coal-fired docks, oil depots, several large naval weapons and ammunition depots, as well as naval sanatoriums and Some training base facilities are the most important and well-equipped support bases of the Royal Navy in the mainland of the empire.

Back to the topic
Pier 9 occupies a coastline of about 1.3 kilometers along the coast. There is a tall bridge crane on the dock. This is a port machinery first developed by Changan Heavy Industry. There are 8 concrete cement slab counterweights at the end, each weighing 260 lbs.

Each lift can lift up to 1600 lbs of cargo.

When Li Cha came here, it was a busy time of the day.Ocean-going ships loading and unloading cargo are full of docks, thousands of dock workers are busy loading and unloading cargo, and thousands of cargo trucks and heavy-duty horse-drawn carriages come and go between the docks and warehouses, presenting an orderly and busy scene. Labor scene.

The coastal wharf is one of the first companies to use trucks on a large scale. The original 1.5-ton trucks often load three tons or more cargo here. The distance between the wharf and the warehouse is more than ten kilometers long and short Then a few kilometers.

Once this kind of heavy truck that does not need to rest, does not need to feed and drink, and does not know how tired it is, it has been favored by rich and powerful terminal companies, and it has been widely promoted soon.

After many years of application
The performance of diesel trucks has gradually stabilized, and they no longer break down halfway at every turn. They can adapt to long-term high-intensity transportation labor, and thus gradually become the main force of wharf and port transportation.

Li Cha glanced over
There are about five or six hundred heavy-duty trucks in sight. Some heavy trucks are emitting thick black smoke, and they are struggling to drive to the distance with full loads. Some empty trucks are lined up in a long line, waiting to be loaded. Open the hood for inspection.

During the doping period, there were about three or four hundred heavy carriages with double horses, not as many as trucks.

These four-wheeled heavy carriages can carry five or six thousand pounds of goods. They were originally the main force of wharf transportation, but now they are obviously lonely.

At the beginning of the 19th century, when Emperor Napoleon of France led his army to invade Tsarist Russia, he accompanied the army with more than 18700 heavy and light four-wheeled carriages. The military heavy four-wheeled carriages could weigh up to 4 pounds, and they were the main force for transporting the French army's luggage.

The heavy four-wheeled carriages of the French army mainly travel on wild dirt roads, while port transshipment travels on flat cement or asphalt roads, so the amount of cargo that can be towed is heavier, but it is also more laborious.

on the pier

Several waiting coachmen are helping their companions who are full of goods to push the cart.

The sound of the whip whipped by the coachman in front drove the two strong horses to slowly pull the heavy carriage, which seemed quite strenuous.

"Hey... buddy, do you have to push your carriages like this?? That's too much work." Li Cha walked over to strike up a conversation with the drivers.

Several coachmen who had just pushed away a carriage were dusting their hands and clothes. They turned their heads and walked back. Hearing Li Cha's question, a sturdy middle-aged man replied heartily; "This gentleman looks People who have drunk foreign ink don’t know that our jobs are almost being snatched away by the big iron bull. How can we not pretend more?”

"It's okay to pull less and run faster. How do you say that?"

"That's not the same. Haven't you seen such a long queue? It takes at least an hour to queue up, and it takes at most half an hour to pull from here to the warehouse. How much less cargo do you need to pull in a day? "

"That's true, but it's too much for Yuan Ma to pull goods like this!"

"Listening to what you say, you know livestock. These are the best horses in the ranch. Basically, we need to change a batch in more than 20 days. It is really hurting the shaft horses to keep pulling such heavy loads. You have to take care of them when you change them back. Take care of yourself, otherwise you won’t be able to do heavy work.”

"Then why not save money to buy a big iron bull?"

"Hahaha... Sir, you are a full man who doesn't know how hungry you are. How much does it cost to buy a big iron bull? One of the trucks we transport here is a Chang'an truck, and the other is a Detroit truck. The cheaper Detroit truck costs 9000 Diverse, trucks in Chang’an are in the early 1s, who can afford to buy two apartments in Chang’an for this price?”

"What about them?" Li Cha asked, pointing to other trucks on the pier.

The trucks on these wharves are not owned by the wharf company, most of them are privately owned, and they are engaged in a business of transporting goods here, and get paid according to the quantity of goods transported.

The leading coachman bit his lip, stood down and said;
"You don't know this gentleman, those who really work on the wharf can't afford a car, and those who can afford a car hire someone to drive it and sit at home to collect money.

On the pier, you can hire a driver for 30 or [-] yuan a month, and you can earn at least [-] to [-] yuan a day. How cost-effective is that?

In Chang'an, the imperial capital, a strong horse like mine costs between 300 and 400 yuan, and two horses plus a carriage cost 1000 yuan.

If you do the math, you will know where the difference is? "

(End of this chapter)