Among horse-drawn vehicles, a lorry was a low-loading
trolley. It was used mainly for the carriage of other vehicles, for example for delivery from the coachbuilders or returning there for repair.
Its very small wheels were mounted under the deck which had to be wider than the track of the vehicles to be carried. It had two ramps, stowed above the back axle and below the body. These were withdrawn from the lorry and one end of each attached to the back of the deck while the other ends rested on the ground. A winch, mounted on the headboard was then used to draw the load up the ramps and onto the deck. The winch cable, low fixed sideboards and a low hinged tailboard plus lashings retained it there.
The lorry was rather like a wooden version of the modern car-carrying trailer, intended for towing behind a car, except that the
wheels
A wheel is a circular component that is intended to rotate on an axle bearing. The wheel is one of the key components of the wheel and axle which is one of the six simple machines. Wheels, in conjunction with axles, allow heavy objects to be ...
were
wood
Wood is a porous and fibrous structural tissue found in the stems and roots of trees and other woody plants. It is an organic materiala natural composite of cellulose fibers that are strong in tension and embedded in a matrix of lignin th ...
en, with iron tyres and were not close-coupled. The front ones were on a
steering undercarriage. The driver's seat was mounted on the top of the headboard.
Around 1900, the lorry developed a sturdier form for carrying the heavier motor cars. These motor car lorries were two-horse vehicles, partly because of the weight carried but also because the roll-resistance of the very small wheels had to be overcome. For the same reason, it was primarily an urban vehicle so that, on the paved roads, the small wheels were not an insurmountable handicap. In any case, the axles were sprung.
As in many fields, as time went by, people used the word perhaps without understanding its detailed meaning, so that it became applied less precisely and other configurations were given the name. By 1911, as the motor-propelled
lorry
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construction ...
(a kind of
truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construction ...
) developed, a pedant would have regarded it as being more the heir of the heavy trolley than of the horse-drawn lorry. However, the
railway vehicles, first noted by the Oxford English Dictionary from 1838, were more like the horse-drawn road lorry. In these earlier years, it was also called a lurry. In Britain, "lorry" nowadays means any large powered
truck
A truck or lorry is a motor vehicle designed to transport cargo, carry specialized payloads, or perform other utilitarian work. Trucks vary greatly in size, power, and configuration, but the vast majority feature body-on-frame construction ...
.
See also
*
Horse-drawn vehicle
A horse-drawn vehicle is a mechanized piece of equipment pulled by one horse or by a team of horses. These vehicles typically had two or four wheels and were used to carry passengers and/or a load. They were once common worldwide, but they have m ...
*
Wagon
A wagon or waggon is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by draught animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people.
Wagons are immediately distinguished from ...
References
*Ingram, A. ''Horse-Drawn Vehicles Since 1760'' (1977)
*Oxford English Dictionary (1971 & 1987) {{ISBN, 0-19-861212-5
Horse-Drawn Carriages.
External links
Articles about Horse-drawn Carriages
Wagons
Horse transportation