1. Read and translate the text in written form using a dictionary Transportation

The most important physical distribution activity is transportation, moving products from place to place. Transportation is one of the nation's largest indus­tries. Private corporate investment in transportation facilities exceeds $250 bil­lion; and public investment in highways, waterways, ports, harbors, and air traffic facilities is estimated at several times the private sector figure. One in every ten workers in the United States is employed in some phase of the transportation industry.

Accordingly, even though there has been much "deregula­tion" in recent years, the U.S. transportation business remains closely monitored by a variety of regulatory agencies and restricted by law. Three types of trans­portation operations are recognized under law: private carriers, contract carriers, and common carriers.

Private carriers are companies that own or operate a transportation sys­tem for the movement of their own goods. A&P, Safeway, and Kroger maintain fleets of trucks that move food and merchandise from their warehouses to their grocery stores. Under the laws applying to private carrier operations, these cor­porations are not allowed to carry any other firm's merchandise.

Contract carriers are transportation companies that offer their transportation services on an individual for-hire basis to corporations shipping goods. Such carriers sign specific contracts with shippers to perform a specific trans­portation service. For instance, a Florida-based firm may sign a contract with the Florida Orange Growers Association to truck a certain number of cases of grapefruit to the New York market. At present, all such contracts are subject to review and regulation by state and federal transportation regulatory agencies.

Common carriers are transportation companies that offer their services to the general public over established regular routes and schedules at pub­lished prices. Common carriers are required by law not to discriminate in their prices and service among potential customers. Because of their availability and dependability, common carriers are the major transporters in the physical dis­tribution of goods.

2. Give the summary of the text

2.Give the summary of the text Food Stores—From "Cash and Carry" to Supermarket

Food selling¹ under­went only gradual changes in the nineteenth century. Public markets, butcher shops, home curing and canning, and traveling peddlers handled most con­sumer needs (remember, most consumers were farmers). Not until 1912 did John Hartford open his first "cash and carry" grocery store. Hartford's A&P Tea Company was already an established specialty chain, but Hartford foresaw a growing urban market for a full line of groceries and meats. The stores, however, had to be located within walking distance of the customers' homes or at least along the trolley lines. Between 1912 and 1915, A&P opened an average of eight stores a day, 7,500 in all. Each store was usually manned by two clerks who retrieved requested boxes and jars from shelves, wrapped a limited selection of meats, weighed vegetables and operated the cash registers. In the 1920s A&P and its imitators began to replace the two-man stores with larger self-service operations. Americans became accustomed to pushing grocery carts² as an ordinary and normal aspect of life. In the late 1930s, the modern supermarket appeared with its full range of precut and prepackaged meats, frozen foods, and specialty sections.

Beginning in the post-World War II years, Americans moved to the suburbs by the millions. The auto made everyone mobile. No longer was there much need for neighborhood grocery stores. During the 1950s, many food chains closed their surviving self-service stores and most of their early supermarkets and opened a new breed of supermarkets in the sprawling suburban shopping centers. Together with department stores, variety stores, specialty shops and, later, discount houses, food retailers followed their customers.

Other retailing changes followed. The growth of the discount houses in the 1950s and 1960s led many food chains to develop their own nonfood discount operations. These were not notably successful, probably because of the limited nonfood retail experience of the operators. Meanwhile, within the food store, more and more shelf space became devoted to nonfood items—toiletries, drugs, and hardware—which generally provided profit margins of 15 percent or more, while most food items had margins of under 2 percent.

Discount Stores. Discount houses have profoundly affected modern retailing. The discount operation is the five and dime store³, department store, and spe­cialty shop all rolled up in one. As the discounting practice evolved, the mer­chandising plan become quite simple: Keep overhead down by hiring a small sales staff and using inexpensive display and selling areas. Meanwhile, sell nationally advertised products at lower than list prices—and also sell a magnif­icent collection of "junk"⁴ that once might have been found only at a five and dime store. The sales pitch⁵ was always the same: Appeal to the customers' sense of economy.

The first discount houses appeared after World War II, usually quartered in old warehouses and abandoned factories in downtown business districts. How­ever, they quickly moved to suburban shopping locations, and within a very few years, Korvette's, King, Zayre and others grew to considerable size. The larger variety chains opened their own discount subsidiaries, as did the larger grocery chains. Department store chains, such as May Company and Federated Stores, also organized their own discount outlets.

By the early 1970s, discount operations appeared ready to conquer all retail competition. Then the boom slowed. First of all, the vast building of discount houses created excessive competition. As a result, profit margins declined and stayed low. Second, consumer purchases of household appliances and furni­ture, the backbone of most discount operations, began to slow down. Some retail analysts believed that the market for these goods shrunk as the modern house building boom drew to a close.

Convenience Stores. A recent minor retailing revolution has been the rise of convenience stores which supply selected, frequently purchased food items such as bread, milk, beer, snack food, and delicatessen specialties. Generally such stores are open 24 hours a day, every day. They are usually located along major urban highways or in the central city. Frequently, they're former gasoline stations that now offer only self-service gasoline pumping. They seem to be especially attractive to both younger, single consumers and the older residents living in the neighborhood. The single buyer tends to avoid supermarkets whenever possible and the older resident often has no transportation to the suburban shopping centers.

Despite the incredible optimism borne⁶ by marketers as they look toward the future, retailing activities seem to resemble the old adage⁷ that "there is nothing new under the sun." The modern convenience store and the specialty merchan­dise shop are not-so-distant relatives of the general store and single-line stores of a century ago. The old variety stores are undergoing a revival. Supermarkets have changed little in appearance or in function over the past two decades. Even "hypermarkets," which attempt to merchandise practically every conceivable consumer item under one roof, are scarcely a new idea anymore. Similarly, the idea behind the shopping center and the shopping mall is several decades old. Where then is the next retailing revolution going to come from?

In the present era of high technology, marketers have recently shown inter­est in electronic retailing. The idea is simple enough: Induce the consumer to do his or her purchasing while sitting at home in front of a computerized TV set. In mid-1983, Viewdata Corporation, in cooperation with American Bell, opened the nation's first commercial interactive-video sales system, Viewtron, which went one step further with the older concept of buying through home computers. Using telephone connections, a viewer (potential buyer) can communicate with the seller (whose products are seen and demonstrated on the screen) by means of a computer.