GETTING FUEL TO OIL PROSPECTORS.
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Difficult Work Successfully Accomplished by Motor Lorries.
S0 rapidly is mechanical road transport growing that the bogy of a world fuel famine is continually being conjured up. Quite apart from this feature, transport users in many Parts of the Empire depend entirely upon imported fuel for keeping their growing fleets of motor vehicles running. Small wonder, then, that feverish prospecting for oil is being undertaken in all those parts of the world where it is thought possible that a successful "strike " might be made.
A greatly deterring factor, hitherto, has been the comparative inaccessibility of the points where it is thought that prospecting would meet with success. Drilling for oil is not a mere matter of machinery. Even before oil is actually struck fuel must be found for weeks, even months, to drive the machinery. The scene of operations may he many miles from the nearest centre of civilization, and be tweeu these two points may lie practically untrocked desert
land.
The dependability of the modern motor vehicle is such, hoNvOsver, that this one-time almost insuperable difficulty has been surmounted. Gradients can hardly be too steep, desert sands too holding, or mountain roads too winding, to stay the regular running of the high-powered lorry.
A recent instance of the manner in which lorries have kept oil-drilling operations going in a remote spot comes from California. An S.O.S. was sent out by the superin.tendent te' a motor-haulage company. at Santa FA Springs. He had tried three makes of lorry, with a view to keeping his drills continuously going with fuel oil, Nit, ()Wing to the inability of these vehicles to negotiate the intervening 17 miles of mountain and desert sand, complete stoppage of work was frequent.
The company put their most powerful lorry—au Autoear —to this job. The accompanYing illustrations serve to demonstrate the ability of this vehicle to negotiate the extremely difficult mountain gradients and turns. These were so sharp, indted, that we are told that Autocars were the only lorries available that could negotiate them. The capacity of the tank body was 1,100 gallons.