Fitting in the theme of "labour and the working class", I've recently found out that my great grandfather was a "hire carter", ironic seeing as his last name was actually Carter.
I was wondering about the specifics of being a "hire carter." Does it essentially mean that he was contracted by different people (similar to our modern day freelancers) to transport belongings and people from A to B? What kind of vehicle would be used - cart? wagon? Was it a stable form of income?
Any other detail would be greatly appreciated!
Carters hire themselves out to transport goods and materials to wherever they are needed. You're spot on in that case.
Their services are vital for society, much as truck drivers are to modern society. Come harvest time you see carters being hired to transport crops to market centers, transporting lumber and bricks and fill for construction projects, bringing trade goods from seaports and trading hubs to outlying areas, and perhaps most commonly bringing firewood into urban centers.
Depending on the area a carter is operating out of, it could be a fairly stable job. In a seaport, such as Salem, carters would be vital for supporting the maritime industries. When building ships you're reliant on very particular pieces of lumber, and these trees are first harvested along the coast where they can be easily transported by boat. As a result, by 1800 shipbuilders in Salem are relying on forests being harvested 20-30 miles inland. For a ship in the 300-500 ton range, that's an immense amount of ship timbers to move. If this timber doesn't arrive, the ships aren't built, the goods don't flow, and the entire maritime economy collapses. To say carters were important is an understatement.
Pay is something a bit harder to pin. Of the one receipt I have on hand for a carter, he earns $2 to cart 45 bushels of corn and some timber. I know Salem was on one end of the trip but have no clear record of the distance being traveled and can't say accurately how it would compare to other professions. What I can offer is that a year's rent for a middle class home in Salem during this time is about $80. Given the work to be done, I would consider it to be a fairly stable source of income.
As for vehicle and materials, I don't have much to offer. Given that more space = more materials = more profits, tends to be the popular notion in the maritime world in this period; I would feel confident that the end goal would be owning a larger wagon or perhaps hiring a few employees and running multiple wagons.
To sum it up: Carters are the independent truck drivers of their day. They're hired as needed for a myriad of jobs that are vital for a market economy, and would be somewhere between mid-lower and middle class on the socioeconomic ladder.