Carriers and corporations: carrying rights, Susten and the vicinanze

The Säumer and the unit of the load

Until the carriage road was completed in 1830, almost everything that crossed the Gotthard travelled on the backs of animals. The carrier was the Säumer (Italian somiere or mulattiere), who led a train of pack horses or mules, each carrying a Saum (Italian soma), a load that averaged about 200 kg in the Lucerne registers of around 1500, divided into two bales hung on either side of the saddle.¹ The Saum was both a unit of transport and a unit of account: tolls, freight rates and warehouse fees were expressed per Saum or per bale. The registers of the Lucerne Zentnerzoll and of the Leventina tolls recorded loads in these units. In winter the carriers used sledges on the snow of the upper valleys. Traffic through Urseren reached an average of about 200 loads a day in the eighteenth century, besides 60 to 80 overnight stays, and the traffic in carts and sledges over the pass peaked around 1880, on the eve of the railway, at some 200,000 quintals (Kilozentner).² The work was dangerous. Avalanches, rock falls and storms killed carriers and animals every winter. The hospice on the pass, served by Capuchins of the Milanese province from 1689 to 1801, gave shelter to travellers who could not reach the valleys.³

The carrier on the Gotthard was rarely an independent entrepreneur who took a load from Lucerne to Milan. He was a peasant of the valleys who kept a few animals and earned a supplementary income by carrying goods over one stage of the road. The combination of farming and carrying shaped the organization of the trade. It was seasonal, since farm work in summer competed with transport. It was also collective, since the valley communities regulated who could carry goods, at what rates and in what order.⁴ For the modern reader the closest analogy is a cooperative with an exclusive licence. Each community along the road held the right to carry goods over its section, and merchants who wanted to use the road had to hand their goods over at the boundary of each section to the carriers of the next community.

Carrying rights and the Rodfuhr

In the Grisons the carriers' cooperatives, called Roden there, were grouped before the sixteenth century into five associations known as Porten, each of which held the monopoly of carrying goods over a section of the route. On the Gotthard the same functions were exercised by the carriers of Uri and Urseren, where the right to carry was reserved to the members of the commons (Allmendgenossen) and where a carriers' ordinance of 1393 gave the men of Urseren the monopoly of transport through their valley.⁵ Within each association the loads were distributed among the members in a fixed rotation, the Rod (Italian rodo), on the instructions of officials called Teiler or of the Sustmeister, so that each member had his turn and no member could monopolize the traffic. In Urseren the carriers' ordinance of 1393 was renewed by Uri in 1498 and again in 1701, which shows how long the order of the stages lasted. The system spread the income of the transit trade across the households of the valley and prevented the rise of a class of large carriers. It had obvious disadvantages for the merchant. Every change of carrier cost time, since goods had to be unloaded, weighed, stored and reloaded at each Sust, and every handling risked damage and theft. The merchant also had no choice of carrier and no power to negotiate rates.⁶

The alternative to transport by stages (Teilfuhr) was the direct transport or Strackfuhr (Latin conducere ad forleytum), in which the same carrier took the goods to their destination without reloading. The Strackfuhr was faster and cheaper for the merchant, but it deprived the carriers of the intermediate stages of their income. It was therefore combined with a fee, the Fuhrleite (Italian forletto), which compensated for the maintenance of the road and for the carrying right and was collected in the Susten by the Teiler. The balance between transport by stages and Strackfuhr was a permanent subject of negotiation between merchants, towns and valley communities. Direct transport established itself early and quickly in areas where a strong lordship could impose it on the communities, and only gradually in the rest of the Alpine transit region.⁷

Notes

1. HLS, art. "Säumerei" (Hans Stadler, version of 18.06.2012), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/014053/2012-06-18/, on pack-animal transport from Sust to Sust. The average of about 200 kg per load follows from HLS, art. "Gotthardpass" (version of 30.08.2016), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007466/2016-08-30/: 170 t corresponded to 852 Säume a year in 1493–1503. The weight of a Saum varied by place and period. ↩
2. HLS, art. "Ursern" (as above): "Im 18. Jahrhundert erreichte die Transportmenge durchschnittlich 200 Säume pro Tag, dazu kamen 60 bis 80 Übernachtungen" and "Der Passverkehr auf Karren und Schlitten über den Gotthard erreichte um 1880 mit 200'000 Kilozentnern seinen Höhepunkt"; HLS, art. "Säumerei" (as above), on the greater intensity of transport in winter. ↩
3. HLS, art. "Gotthardpass" (version of 30.08.2016), https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/007466/2016-08-30/: the second hospice "wurde 1689-1801 von Kapuzinern der Mailänder Ordensprovinz betreut". ↩
4. HLS, art. "Säumerei" (as above), on transport by stages "durch Landwirte im Nebenerwerb" and on the greater intensity of transport in winter ("Gemeinhin war die Transportintensität im Winter grösser als im Sommer"); HLS, art. "Leventina" (as above): "Nach der Landwirtschaft war die Säumerei das wichtigste Gewerbe im Tal; sie stellte für die Bauern einen bedeutenden Nebenerwerb dar." ↩
5. HLS, art. "Säumerei" (as above), on the Roden and the five Porten of the Grisons, on the reservation of the carrying right to the members of the commons in Uri, Urseren and the Leventina, and on Uri's regulation of transport on the whole Gotthard route in 1498; HLS, art. "Ursern" (as above), on the carriers' ordinance of 1393. ↩
6. HLS, art. "Säumerei" (as above), on the fixed rotation (Rod) "auf Anweisung der Teiler oder Sustmeister"; HLS, art. "Ursern" (as above): "1393 Säumerordnung, 1498 und 1701 von Uri erneuert". The disadvantages for merchants are the author's inference from the system of stages. ↩
7. HLS, art. "Säumerei" (as above), on the Strackfuhr and the Fuhrleite (forletto), which was "durch spezielle Beamte, die sogenannten Teiler, in den Susten eingezogen", and on the spread of direct transport: "Die Direktfuhr etablierte sich besonders in Gebieten mit starker Herrschaft früh und rasch". ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of August 2025.