ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the US Army developed a system to select motor trucks. It examines the connections between and among the soldiers who designed and bought the trucks and the soldiers who depended on them for logistical support in the field. Armies have always had such systems. Sometimes they have been corporate, mechanistic, hierarchical and formal—often they have been cooperative, organic, consultative, familial and informal. The nineteenth-century American army was a cooperative, organic, familial, informal system, a confederation of self-interested subgroups, and it was difficult to persuade parochial branch lobbies to take an armywide perspective on technological innovation. Relations between soldier/logisticians and combat soldiers were seldom more than officially cordial. Before the Great War, with thousands of miles separating the country from any hostile nation and no immediate threat from powerful neighbors, it was possible to select and introduce new equipment in a leisurely manner.
