A Nation on Wheels

A Nation on Wheels

Introduction The world is full of cars and trucks. There are over 600 million of them! They are in even the smallest town in the smallest country. There are over 200 million cars and trucks just in the United States. Most of these vehicles are automobiles. We are a nation moving on wheels!

The Early Days People have always needed to travel. At first, people walked every where- even long distances. Then they tamed animals to ride and taught some to pull wagons. Horses, camels, and even elephants helped people make trips and carry things. Imagine riding to school on an elephant! Using animals was better than walking-but it was still slow.

Inventors tried to build a machine with wheels to carry people faster. They thought of building an engine to run it. They tried running engines with steam or with electricity. But neither engine worked well enough. In the late 1880s, people made engines that could run on gasoline, or gas. These engines were small but powerful. They could travel faster and go farther. Today, most cars use gas engines.

How Cars Are Made The first cars did not look like the ones you see today. They looked like carriages without horses. People even called them horseless carriages! At first, cars were made one at a time by hand. It took a long time. They were expensive. Not everyone could afford a handmade car. People tried ways to manufacture cars faster and at a lower cost. In 1896, one early company could make only 13 cars in a year. But by 1899, a company could make over 2, 000!

In 1903, Henry Ford started the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan. Detroit would soon become the center of car making. Ford's company sold a car called the Model T. Ford wanted to make cars that cost less--so more people could buy them. This meant he had to manufacture more cars and do it faster.