Page 265 - One Thousand Ways to Make $1000

investment, which included the price of the machine, was $317.

Starting a Package Delivery System

T

WO years ago, James Overhause took his last hundred dollars, bought a
second-hand truck for thirty-five of them and spent several dollars fixing it
up. He had a sign painted, and announced to the world that he was in the
expressing and moving business. But nothing happened. He sat around the
front room of his flat for several days, but no one seemed to want to express
anything or move things about the city of Chicago. He then went out to
stores, and sought odd jobs delivering heavy boxes to warehouses and
picking up loads to be brought back to the stores. In this way, he managed to
eke out a bare existence, but he thought he was progressing. A chain-store
manager stopped him on the street one day, asked how business was with
him, and said if Jimmy wanted to take over the delivery of groceries for the
store, he could pick up a few dollars a day from making store deliveries. This
was his start. Today he has seven new delivery wagons operating on the
south side of Chicago, and more on the way. “When that A & P store
manager asked me to make deliveries of gro

ceries for his customers, he explained that the store was a cash and carry
store, and did not make deliveries,” said Jimmy, “and then he pointed out that
the fellow who was making deliveries up to that time gave poor service.
‘There are a few dollars a day in it if you give service,’ the manager told me.
I thanked him. A charge of ten cents for each box delivered was added to the
store customer’s bill, and collected at the time the groceries were paid for. All
I had to do was stop at the store, put the deliveries on the truck, and deliver
them. But there weren’t many boxes every day. That one store hardly paid for
the gasoline. I lined up another chain store, two independent grocers and
three butchers, however, and made the rounds of each, loaded up the truck
and delivered. At the end of each day, the store managers or owners paid me
the amount they had collected, and I was able to carry on.

“The most important thing about this type of service was to make frequent