Freight in the Sky

When a Midwest college boy was recently invited to fly to New York to be a guest on a TV quiz show, the airline shipped along the thing that made him distinctive: a 2,300-lb. sugar cookie that the lad had baked himself. Nowadays, the nation's airlines are willing to carry almost anything--including some substantial losses--in the rush to fill their cargo bins. Air freight (excluding air mail and air express) has increased more than 50% in the last four years, reaching a volume of $230 million last year. This year it will increase another 10%, and aviation experts believe that it may some day rival passenger travel as a source of airline income.

Bitter Controversy. The fastest rise in air-freight shipments has been among the major U.S. trunk airlines--United, TWA, American and Pan American--which are predominantly passenger carriers. This fact has involved them in a bitter controversy with the all-cargo lines, such as Slick and Flying Tiger, which claim that the encroachments of the big lines could drive them out of business. Most of the big lines are losing money on their cargo operations, but these losses are balanced out by the current rich profits from passenger travel. The Civil Aeronautics Board, sympathetic to the plight of the all-cargo lines (which carry 30% of U.S. air freight), last week announced that it will come to their aid, most likely with route and rate concessions to keep them aloft.

The real surge in air freight came only after the airlines began flying the big passenger jets, whose cargo compartments alone can carry as much freight as a DC-4 air freighter. But the breakthrough in air freight is only beginning. Before mid-1965, U.S. airlines will be flying 30 DC-8F and Boeing 707-321C jet freighters, each of which in one week's normal schedule can car ry coast to coast enough freight to fill 20 boxcars. Using prepacked freight pallets, special lift mechanisms and aircraft floors with built-in rollers, crews can load and unload jet freighters in less than half the time it takes to load a piston plane with one third the cargo capacity. Air freighters can offer overnight delivery on both coast-to-coast and transatlantic shipments.

Brioches & Mistletoe. Air freight's big millstone is still its expense: rates average a costly 11.1-c- per ton-mile v. only 1.3-c- by rail and 6.3-c- by truck. "We must keep in mind," says United Airlines Chairman "Pat" Patterson, "that the cost of lifting an object differs a great deal from that of pulling it." But many industries obviously find the advantage well worth the cost. Because damage is less and there is little need for crating, nearly all computers are shipped by air. Boeing saved $750,000 by flying 100 jet engines to its Seattle assembly plant in huge zippered bags. The biggest users of air freight are the automakers (biggest U.S. commercial user of all: General Motors), who save millions by cutting down on the number of parts stocked in depots throughout the country; electronics firms also save on inventory and warehouse expenses by air freighting.

Big industry is not the only user. The mistletoe industry in Texas got a lift when growers found that they could jet their perishable product to big Eastern markets. Record manufacturers use jets to distribute new disks before their popularity wanes, and dresses from Hong Kong are air-freighted to the U.S. on racks, thus saving the importer the $1 a dress he would otherwise have to pay for pressing. Every morning, 6,000 Ibs. of Denver steaks are jet-flown to Phoenix, 20,000 Ibs. of Hawaiian papaya fly to West Coast markets, and a Manhattan shop, Cheese Unlimited, puts on sale oven-fresh brioches and croissants jet-lifted in from Paris.

Air freight's most ardent advocates predict that it will turn the U.S. into one vast market "five hours wide and 21 hours deep." That day is still some distance away, but an industry that does not blink at moving a 2,300-lb. cookie is quite capable of making the dream a reality. Right now, in fact, air freight is growing twice as fast as passenger travel.

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