The World Dragon's Heir

Chapter 690: New Car Salesman

"Gentlemen, what do you think? They’ve proven to be quite the vehicle for Wistover, and we’ve taken to using them for nearly everything that doesn’t need a full sized merchant caravan." Dominic informed the Nobles who had gathered to admire the trucks.

"They’re a wonderful design, not so large as most of the ones that we’ve been seeing lately.

It appears that many of the current batch of Techno Wizards have the ’bigger is better’ ideology, and the new truck designs are becoming larger than the tractors. Sure, that’s good for moving lots of cargo, but they’re a struggle to get down city streets when they’re that long." One of the Barons agreed.

"These look like they’re much more practical on the old streets, which aren’t as wide as the modern roads are, since they were built for horses to pass each other, before we allowed trade caravans in the city," another agreed.

That must have been a wild time in his town, Dominic decided. Even the smallest of Baronies at least had a market in the middle of town that you could get to with a trade caravan.

Because that trade caravan often was the entire market.

"Is the price reasonable? They’re quite fancy, in the sense that they have a lot of features, not in the gilded carriage way," a younger Baron, likely newly elevated after the war, asked.

"They’re actually cheaper than the Capital sells a new steam tractor for. We’ve got an assembly line producing them, they’re not individually handcrafted, and that saves a huge amount of time and labour cost for the base vehicle.

Plus, it lets us do things like ship them with spare parts.

Not many, as they’re quite reliable, but each of them carries a spare headlight and a spare tire." Dominic explained.

That wasn’t exactly revolutionary, every trade wagon tried to carry at least one spare wheel, in case they got damaged. But the wheels on this one were thin metal discs, with soft rubber tires. So, it would most likely be the tire that was damaged, not the wheel itself.

"The lights are magitech?" Earl Tarleigh asked.

"Naturally. They use the same magitech core that our line of lanterns does. Actually, you might be interested in those as well, being a seaport. Here, a gift from me to you."

Dominic handed the man one of the simple hanging lamps, of the sort that were all over Wistover at this point. Hung from carriages, front porches, even placed at the end of lane ways to houses, illuminating the road.

It made it easier for the farmers to navigate back home at night after the market, if they were among the group using ox carts.

Many were now cooperating to use one of the Duchy’s tractors and a large trailer, the same one used to load crops from the field. They would just stop at a bunch of neighbours and load boxes of produce, so everyone could go to the market together.

But eventually, they would all have something of their own.

Dominic only charged maintenance fees for the tractors, which let them all get the harvest in and out of the fields in a timely manner. But everyone would prefer to either have one of their own or a mechanical horse.

Preferably the tractor, as it was easier to maintain.

As cool as the mechanical horses were, there were far too many moving parts to make them walk like a horse, and run on magical energy. In comparison, the tractors were relatively simple, and even if you didn’t truly know how they worked, the basics of how to patch what was broken and keep it running until you could get it to a proper shop were fairly clear.

Dominic knew that they had many new ideas for the advancement of transport vehicles, but that simplicity and ease of repair was the defining factor that kept things the way that they were.

Even on these transports, which were considered to be ultra-modern, the only major change to the drivetrain had been in the layout of the drivetrain. It still used crankshaft-driven rods to drive the axles.

The front steering was a marvel of engineering, according to the manufacturer, but the core design hadn’t changed much. The pushrods drove gears in a central box, and spinning shafts transferred the power to the axles.

That part was a change from the directly shaft-driven designs.

It did add complexity, but if you broke a part, any carriage maker could cast you a new gear using the intact portions. They were just bolted in place.

So, while it was a design that none of them would be familiar with, they would understand what they were looking at, and how to fix it. Not as easily for a farmer in the field, but it was also much more agile than the standard steam tractor, less likely to be stuck somewhere that it couldn’t be easily removed from.

Dominic’s list of potential customers was growing fast, and he was definitely going to have to talk to the carriageworks when he got back to Wistover.

They weren’t a Duchy owned shop, it was a private group of techno wizards and smiths who had decided to make their own design of vehicle in a city where there was no other competition, other than farm tractors.

That meant that Dominic couldn’t simply increase production by hiring people, and he wasn’t making a direct profit off them.

But there were so many people involved in sourcing the materials, or working in the factory, that it was good for everyone when he promoted Wistover businesses in the Capital.

It also made him look benevolent to the other Nobles and their staff.

For he wasn’t pushing a business he had a direct interest in, he was just promoting the people of his city, and common people at that. The staff members waiting in the background and taking notes would definitely remember.

The Nobles who vouched for small families were the ones who were going to go the furthest.

Because it was the desperate innovators that always came up with the best ideas, before having them swallowed by wealthy Nobles or Great Families in the region. But when that happened, most of the ideas got watered down so far as to be unrecognizable.