Superannuated and Obsolete: How transportation lore devolved with technological change

According to Webster's Dictionary,the definition for "superannuation" is; "... to make, declare, or prove obsolete or out-of-date." and the definition of "obsolete" (in the same source) is, "... no longer in use or no longer useful." As I am now an octogenarian, I felt a pang today as I decided to throw out my Oxford English Dictionary. It is a doorstop consisting of two large volumes and a supplemental volume in very small, perhaps minuscule print, it came with a magnifying glass neatly stowed in a drawer built into the set box for convenience. It hasn't been used since grad school and merely takes up space and collects dust. But in tossing it, I was reminded of many of my favorite folks from our common history. Perhaps in anticipation of becoming obsolete myself, I have in my history studies given attention to the folks made disposable by technology and economic whim. The characters I've studied I call waymasters as they knew the ways to get goods from one point to the next in the least time with the least cost. This was no mean feat in the 17th and 18th century. It was well into the nineteenth century before states and counties began erecting road signage; the attitude was, 'If you need a sign you have no business here anyway.' Waymasters, without signage, had to be able to read nature and had to know where to get the best information about the way ahead. \ In the Southeast, where I focused my studies, bridges were few and far between until the Civil War made steel cheap enough for bridges that could withstand the fury of creeks and rivers glutted by rain. And, it was even later yet, until World War I made corrugated steel pipe and half pipes cheap enough to provide culverts, that a minor creek could no longer stop traffic until a spate passed. You can see this progress in the rerouting of roads that started on ridge tops, then moved down the face of the ridge's slope with each improvement in water crossings until, today you are hard pressed to find an old ridge road still in use, travel is, generally in the lowlands. So, as part of their lore, waymasters had to know the character and structure of every wet stream crossing in their way. The first time I noticed obsolescence at work,I observed it through the pages of the St. Paul Dispatch and Pioneer Press, a birdcage liner I delivered to 60 or 80 houses mornings and evenings when I was a middle school student. An echo of that superannuating moment can yet be heard in our own times in the misogyny and resentment of white males now competing with women and people of color. The affair involved teamsters and independent truckers striking for pay raises and, partially, to fend off women determined to drive trucks. Vehicle technology was rapidly changing in the 1950s. Among the most dramatic changes were the rapid development of automatic transmissions, power steering and power brakes. Before the advent of those wonders, moving a semi-trailer combo required a good deal of upper body and leg strength. For example, semis had tightly sprung clutches for disengaging the power train from the engine when shifting to another gear. Most over-the-road semis had eighteen or more gears and shifting was a near continuous activity. And before power brakes, reining in several tons of cargo took real effort. Add to all that the need to muscle a semi through turns, especially low speed turns, when tire friction was at its worst and it is easy to understand why moving one of those monsters over the road or backing it into a loading bay was manly work. Power steering, hydraulically assisted brakes, and automatic transmissions changed all that. Almost overnight, muscularity in truck drivers became obsolete, and trucking companies could put darn near anyone behind the wheel of their semi-trailers, and old-school truckers, guys who could feed a family of five or more just by bossing a big, dumb truck down the road saw there income and their dignity destroyed. The truckers were inchoately mad about being superannuated by technology so they took it out on the newcomers. There were brawls and gunfire before folks settled into the new reality, the reality that truckers were not so special after all. In my study of transportation routes and technology I saw this drama reenacted repeatedly. Porters were made obsolete by pack-horsemen who, in turn, were made obsolete by wagoners. Near the top of Red Mountain, in Person County North Carolina you can see the remnants of a wagon road pioneered in 1702 and 1703. At one point along the way, on the steep west slope, near the mountaintop, you can see a previously existing pack-horse trail diverging out from under the wagon road and approaching the crest from on a different route. There is sufficient remaining evidence, in journals and diaries, to believe this deviation was designed to provide overnighting accommodations in two different establishments to avoid the putting the past and the future under one roof. With each change of technology cargo per carriage unit increased and the unit cost for transportation decreased thus increasing the profits of those who underwrote the ventures. The only constant was that the capitalists underwriting the ever-longer porter and pack-horse trains, and the ever-larger wagons, retained enough experienced waymasters to ensure that their cargoes arrived at their destination as fast as possible, and that the new generation of waymasters were properly trained to the new reality. Waymasters of old, after the trucks became standardized tools, are a thing of the past. The hardware and navigation methods changed as did the power units moving cargo. They all were systematized, standardized and automated where possible. So what were once waymasters are now rolling bookkeepers whose main lore, a skill not to be sniffed at, is being able to keep two log books. One, intended for the driver's paymaster, is hidden and it shows the real hours of travel and sleep, and the other is kept in the truck cab and is skillfully devised to flummox insurance company outriders and Interstate Commerce Commission inspector who asks for proof that the driver is properly rested and not a threat to the cargo or the public. Success in waymastery, then and now, though calling for different lore, is still defined by not getting caught, be it by high water, washed out roads, or today’s ICC inspector. It may be the basic goal of all commercial travelers throughout time.