The
trolley was a platform body with four relatively small wheels mounted underneath it, the front two on a turntable undercarriage. It was drawn by a pair of horses and the driver's seat was mounted on the headboard.
The lift van was a sturdy wooden box to long, wide and high to the centre of the roof. It had two wrought iron straps passing down the sides and under the bottom, having a sling shackled to holes in the top ends of the straps so that the whole and its contents could be lifted by crane onto the trolley for movement by road, onto a railway truck or into the hold of a ship. It was therefore a logical step on from the
pantechnicon van in the development of
containerization
Containerization is a system of intermodal freight transport using intermodal containers (also called shipping containers, or International Organization for Standardization, ISO containers). Containerization, also referred as container stuf ...
.
The system thereby provided a means of door-to-door transit and was used particularly for furniture removals. The furniture makers and merchants,
Maple and Co., in particular, used it to deliver between their depôts in London and Paris.
It was also used for the carriage of
meat
Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...
. In this case, the lift van had a double floor, roof and walls with insulating material such as cork and a layer of paper between the cork and each skin. The insulation thickness was about in the floor and elsewhere.
The earliest note by the ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the principal historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP), a University of Oxford publishing house. The dictionary, which published its first editio ...
'' is a reference by ''
The Baltimore Sun
''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news.
Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publi ...
'' in 1955, comparing the advantages of "''lift-on, lift-off service involving only a truck van''" with those of "''
roll on-roll off''". However, this would appear to relate to the modern form of container while using old terminology.
References
*Ingram, A. ''Horse-Drawn Vehicles Since 1760'' (1977)
*''Oxford English Dictionary'' (1987)
{{Horse-drawn carriages
Wagons