History Horse & Buggy Question vs 1909 Model T

There has to be someone on the HAMB with some horse & buggy driving experiance, so here is my question. The Model T Ford is 100 years old this year and for many people was their first automobile. On a warn summer day you could crank start it and be on your way in 2 minutes or less. Start to finish how long does it take to take a horse out of the stall hook up harness attach the buggie and be rolling ?

 

Takes about 20 minutes. But then, after you came home you had to unhitch the horse, take off the harness, hang it up, dry off the horse--(yes, horses work up a big sweat if you travel far or fast---and if you don't dry them off good when you put them back in the stable they become ill.)--so add in another 20 minutes at least when you get back home.---But---on the really cold winter mornings, the horse always started. Can't say the same for a model T.

 

Thanks! That had to be a selling point for all automobiles around 1910 and earlier.

 

Not sure with a buggy but to a Harness racing bike ( 2 wheels ) about 5 minutes.

Horse to Carriage about 15

 

The biggest advantage of the horse was not getting stuck in the mud,100 years ago there were very few paved roads.

 

Guess that is why they used teams.

 

Folks with horses live thus: Feed, shovel shit, feed, shovel shit, repeat...
And of course that continued even when horse was switched off...
Probably biggest T inconvenience area was tire repair; going anywhere meant removing and patching tires continually, while working by the road in two feet of horse dung.

 

Each horse contributes 24 pounds of shit a day. Read this on Shorpy.

 

I read a big book on model T's at the book store. they said that in 1910 most people never went more than 25 miles from thier home for thier entire lives. I think the automobile might have changed that a bit.

 

For a few years after that, most people never went 25 miles without prying a tire off the rim and patching the patches on their tube...

 

To give you a real example, back in the seventies as a kid I found some old letters in an very old deserted house in a rural area. The letters were dated 1914-1916. I remember reading in one of those where a lady was writing to another relative that their family would try and come visit sometime soon and maybe stay for a couple months as the distance was far to travel by horse and wagon. The address of the person she was writing to is about 30 miles away from this house. Today that would mean about a 30-45 minute drive. That really stuck with me. My dad found some old front fenders in a barn on the property. Don't know what they were and someone stole them not long after we found em.

 

The distance between towns in eastern and central Texas probably averages between 20-30 miles which is a days travel in a horse and wagon.

 

My great great grandfather Joe Cone wrote this poem about the Model T:

"The Twentieth Century 23rd Psalm"

The Ford is my auto;
I shall not want (another).
It maketh me lie down beneath it;
It anointeth my clothes with oil;
It soreth my soul.
Yea, though I ride through the valleys,
I am towed up the hills;
I fear much evil,
For its rods and its engine discomfort me;
I anoint its tires with patches;
Its radiator runneth over,
I repair its blowouts in the presence of mine enemies.
Surely, if this thing followed me all the days of my life,
I shall dwell in the bughouse forever.

 

Not to mention how much they have to eat to produce 24 pounds of shit.

Think about it... how much to YOU eat versus the estimated weight of YOUR shit... lol...

 

I think Third Ypres was a bit of a special case.

 

There is a small town about 25 miles from my town. Halfway in between is the oldest operating bar/restaurant in Michigan, it's still out in the sticks, actually suburbs now. It was built where it is so that folks could stay overnight during the "long" trip between the two towns in the mid 1800's....

 

1912 advertisement ....





“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they’d have asked for a faster horse.” - Henry Ford


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Funny story---I worked for a year up in the Ottawa valley, one year when I was "between wives". There is an old hotel/bar in Wilno, that thought it would be great/nostalgic to put up a hitching rail out front, like one that had been there 75 years earlier as seen in old pictures. I took one of the local gals out one Saturday night, and drove to the Wilno Tavern so we could listen to the band and have a few drinks. When we arrived , she exclaimed "I can't go in there!!" When I asked "Why not?" a funny story unfolded. This girl had a horse that she rode for pleasure. One day she rode it over to the Wilno tavern and tied it to the hitching rail and went in for a few drinks. While she was in there, the horse shit, (as horses always do). The tavern proprieters told her that she had to clean it up. She held that since the tavern had put up the hitching rail expressly for the use of having horses tied to it, cleaning up the horse shit was the taverns responsibility. The upshot of this argument was that she never cleaned up the horseshit, but the tavern owners banned her from ever coming in there again. True story, so help me God. This was back about 1983 or 1984, and as far as I know, she hasn't been back to that tavern since.---Brian

 

Ain't that the truth - I knew a bloke who fell into the mud there and nearly died.

 

Loving this thread by the way - what could be more old school than this????

 

Not to be a jerk, but the first year for the Model T was 1908. Last year, (2008) a huge Model T Cenntenial celebration was held in Richmond, Indiana. 1908-2008. We had a booth there for the chrome shop and I even got a t-shirt.

 

Speaking of Model T era thinking, ever follow a older person that made a BIG sweeping turn to the left in order to make a turn to the right? That's left over from the horse drawn wagon days. It was so the wagon didn't tip over.

 

Half right: they were introduced in ‘08, but as model year 1909. Kinda like the 2010 models will be out before the end of the year, or like this is the 50th anniversary of the Big Three compacts, all of which were 1960 models.

-Dave

 

Great thread. What about gasoline? How far would a T go on a tank? I guess there weren't quickie marts on every corner so would folks pack their own?

If I stop somewhere and can't swipe my card at the pump, I will leave and find a different store so I guess I would have been out of luck!

 

Ever seen the accessory fuel and water tanks that mounted on "T" running boards! If you look at old pictures from back in the "T" era, it looks like you did quite a bit of packing to do our 25 mile trip. A little off topic but years ago when it became that I was going to be car guy, Itold my grandfather that I wanted to build a "T"(hot rod of course). "Oh my gawd, what for they were terrible cars awfull"! Then proceeded to tell me the story of leaving North Dakota when he was 12 to go work in the oilfields in Texas (about 1920). His ride of choice, "A f***ing terrible model "T" that he salvaged from another farmer, so bad that it didn't even have a body"!! This man hated hot rods all his life, said they were a silly waste of time and effort! Many years later when he passed away I was helping my grandmother clean up and found a picture of my grandfather at 13, down in Texas, covered in oil, smiling, leaning against one of the baddest assed "T" speedsters I've ever seen!!! The nut doesn't fall far from the tree!

 

My experience with horses was on the farm, when I was old enough to help with the horses from about 1942 thru 1946 when dad got our first tractor, after that dad kept one team of draft horses for probably the same reasons we keep old cars. During the transition when he used horses whilst we were getting used to the tractor, I would take the tractor to the field and make a couple of rounds before he showed up with the horses.

If it was in the plan to use the horses the next morning, dad would put them in the stall overnight. They were fed, and the harnesses were hanging on the wall nearby. One man could harness a team in just a few minutes, less than a half hour. I wasn&#8217;t big enough to harness them, but I would lead one, after dad or my older brother had harnessed them, out to help with hitching them up to the wagon. The only time we ever took the horses to town would have been if the car wouldn&#8217;t start or roads were snowbound and the trip was absolutely necessary. The trip to town took a couple of hours. On a saddle horse something less than that. In a car it took around a half hour.

The car my dad had when I was a toddler was a '30 chivvy. He detested Model Ts, must have had some bad experiences with them, never asked him why. We had a 'T' pony motor on a binder. Pulled the binder with 6 horses, then converted it and pulled it with the tractor after '46. Only used it in the summer, of course, never had any problems with the T motor.

 

My Mom in Law told the story (true) the fella went to town an bought a new fangled Model T and never drove before. So the salesman showed him how to drive Henry's car. He did real well, drove all the way home and into the front yard to show every one his new car. When he got near the front porch, all they could hear was him hollering WOO Woo Woo, then crash. Horses had ears. Happened in Morgantown, W Va. Iceman

 

A stock T gets 20mpg, more or less. Tank capacity was 10 gallons. So - 200 mile range?

I think fuel distribution was fairly good by 1909. Not "pumps on every corner" good, but I think gasoline was a regular item at general stores and apothecaries by that time. Much earlier and it was a special-order thing, mainly used for cleaning.

An interesting tidbit about Model Ts and other low-compression engines of the day: if started on gasoline, they would run fairly happily on kerosene. This was later taken advantage of during WWII gas rationing.

-Dave