Unlike the planes of today, these could not be left out in the open. They were cloth and wood, and, even though they were finished with good protection for weather and flying, they could not stand bad weather for any length of time. They would deteriorate: “The way we shipped the Wright plane at that time was to take off the tail, remove the skids, undo them and put them over the wings, leave the wings as they were, and just shove it into a boxcar, endwise. Then the tail assembly could be shoved in with it and also the landing assembly, so that the plane could be assembled very quickly after you arrived at your destination.”54