TABLE 13.-TRUCKS, VEHICLES, AND WAGONS. GROWN IN GROWN OUTSIDE OF Quantity, Average FRUIT AND VEGETABLE PACKAGES. The products of this industry comprise baskets and packages in which fruit and vegetables are shipped and marketed. The growing custom of selling provisions to the consumer in individual packages has in recent years increased the importance of this industry in North Carolina. The commodities are grape baskets, fruit baskets, berry cups, vegetable cups, hoppers, barrels (veneer), and vegetable crates, and the business of making them is confined to the Coastal region, where truck farming and fruit growing is a thriving and rapidly-growing industry. The raw material is delivered to the basket maker in log form, and this accounts for the low price paid as compared with the other industries. The price was $7.65 per M feet log scale, and was the lowest reported by any of the twenty-one industries. It was 66 cents lower than the price paid by excelsior makers, who buy their wood in the forms of billets and poles. Six kinds of wood were reported, as shown in Table 14. The first process of manufacture consists in converting the logs into sheets of veneer, and a further process finishes the articles. The cores which remain after the veneer is cut from the logs are largely sawed into thin lumber and utilized for the covers and bottoms of barrels, hoppers, baskets, etc., and for making light vegetable crates. In the quantity of wood consumed this class of manufacturers stands seventh on the list of North Carolina's wood-using industries, while in the amount of money paid for raw material it ranks ninth on the list. All of the wood used is grown in the State, and in board measure amounts to 8,862,000 feet. Red and tupelo gum, the former being more extensively employed, head the list for quantity. More red gum is cut into veneers than any other wood, and a large percentage of it goes into baskets, crates, and packages. North Carolina pine is second on the list in the quantity used. As in the case of boxes, large sawmills often manufacture fruit and vegetable packages as a side line. |