Chapter 336: The Many Faces of a Van

The biggest headache with designing a smaller truck, Ernest quickly discovered, was that everybody wanted it to be something completely different.

The Royal Postal Service wanted an agile runabout packed to the roof with mailbags that could squeeze down cobblestone alleys.

Alfred Baines wanted something cheaper than a heavy Cargo One to replace pairs of delivery horses.

A Helmarte bakery wanted a brisk van capable of hitting thirty drop-offs before noon.

A commercial laundry demanded a draft-free, fully enclosed cargo box to keep clean linens spotless in the rain.

And Eleanor’s charitable clinic needed something that could haul medical supplies, two nurses, and occasionally a stretcher with an injured patient.

Arthur dumped the stack of inquiries onto the conference table with an exasperated thud.

"Congratulations, Ernest."

Ernest looked up, amused. "What did I do now?"

"You managed to invent five separate motorcars without laying down a single weld."

Hollen let out a hearty laugh, leaning back with his boots propped up.

Arthur tapped the pile. "The postal service wants frequent stops. The freight haulers want sheer volume. The bakers want speed. The laundries want weatherproofing. And your wife wants an ambulance. Yet every single one of them expects the exact same vehicle to do it all."

"Well, that’s why we run a feasibility study first," Ernest said mildly.

Hollen leaned over, tapping one of the draft sketches. "Maybe we’re asking the wrong question."

Ernest glanced at him. "How so?"

"We’re asking what kind of vehicle everybody wants," Hollen said. "We should be asking what kind of machine we can actually build and sell at a profit."

Arthur beamed. "Praise the heavens. Someone finally understands my pain."

Ernest grabbed a piece of chalk, turned to the blackboard, and drew a simple box resting on two axles.

"A shared chassis platform," Ernest said, tapping the board. "One frame, one engine, one transmission, and one standard running gear."

Arthur’s eyes narrowed. "And the bodies?"

"Custom coachwork built on top," Ernest replied. "A delivery van, an open stake-bed, an enclosed mail carrier, or an ambulance. Different shells, identical bones."

Hollen stroked his beard, nodding slowly. "Carriage builders have done that for a hundred years. It makes sense. It means we don’t have to redesign the wheel every time a customer has a different trade."

Ernest wrote three rules underneath the sketch:

LOW RUNNING COSTS

SIMPLE FIELD REPAIRS

BUILT FOR CITY STREETS

Arthur stood up, took the chalk from Ernest’s fingers, and scrawled a fourth line in giant letters:

ACTUALLY MAKES MONEY

Hollen roared with laughter. "Fair enough, Arthur!"

The next morning, Ernest took the train down to Plant Two.

The Model One assembly line was in full swing. The factory floor was far cleaner than it had been six months ago, with standardized jigs and cranes smoothing out the bottleneck stations. Even so, the elusive sixty-one thousand riel price target remained out of reach until production volume climbed higher.

Plant manager Frederick Lawson met them near the engine bay.

"Morning, Lord Teucher," Lawson said warily, eyeing the notebook tucked under Ernest’s arm. "Don’t tell me... another new project?"

"Just a study, Frederick," Ernest smiled.

Lawson groaned. "That word terrifies me."

Ernest stopped beside a crated Model One two-cylinder engine. It was a sturdy, water-cooled gasoline block. Reliable, simple to cast, and cheap to assemble.

"Could this unit handle a light commercial van?" Ernest asked. "Say, half a ton of payload?"

Lawson rubbed his jaw. "Depends on the gearing. City couriers aren’t racing, but stopping and starting every fifty yards with a full load is murder on a transmission. The clutch will take an absolute beating."

"And the frame?" Hollen asked, crouching by a bare passenger chassis. "If you stack half a ton of bread or laundry behind the rear axle, this car frame will sag like an old mule. The springs will bottom out, and steering will go light as a feather."

"Brakes too," Lawson added. "Passenger drum brakes won’t stop five hundred kilos of cargo on a wet downhill cobblestone street."

Ernest nodded, writing in his notebook: Shared components where practical, but never at the expense of safety.

They spent the rest of the week interviewing real clients.

Superintendent Whitmore from the Royal Postal Service was blunt. "We don’t need a racer, Lord Teucher. We need a machine that doesn’t strand the mail in the rain, and one that my postmen can crank without needing an engineer on call."

Margaret Ashford, owner of a major Helmarte bakery, took Ernest right out to her loading docks. The smell of hot yeast and crusty loaves filled the yard as boys loaded wicker baskets into horse wagons.

"Time is my biggest loss," Mrs. Ashford explained, pointing at the cramped wooden wagons. "My drivers spend half their morning shifting baskets around to reach the right orders. A faster truck doesn’t help me at all if the driver spends twenty minutes digging around in the dark for a tray of rolls."

Ernest climbed into the back of a wagon with a measuring tape, sketching internal shelf heights that matched standard bakery trays.

Mrs. Ashford watched him, surprised. "Most motorcar salesmen just shout about horsepower."

Ernest laughed. "I’m not selling you anything yet. I’m trying to make sure when we do build it, it actually saves your business time."

She smiled. "Well, that’s a refreshing change."

The toughest visit was to Eleanor’s community clinic in the lower quarter of Oriel.

Dr. Clara Bennett, a sharp-tongued physician with no patience for aristocratic posturing, led Ernest into a back room and tapped a wooden stretcher.

"Start with this," Dr. Bennett said firmly. "When we move a patient with broken ribs or a hemorrhage, a stiff carriage suspension can kill them. Speed is useless if you shake them to pieces. I don’t want an ordinary delivery van with a cot thrown in the back."

"Understood," Ernest promised. "If we tackle an ambulance, it gets specialized springs and proper tie-downs."

Eleanor gave him an affectionate nudge. "And a washable floor, please."

"And a washable floor," Ernest chuckled.