I.

Route 157,030, Kenesaw to Kearney (Nebraska), 24.68 miles. Average Daily Weight 216 Pounds.

Percentage of Space Occupied.Percentage of Earnings.Should Earn on Basis of Space Used.Did Actually Earn.
Passenger83.7988.90$1,238$1,314
Mail9.376.0213989
Express6.845.0810175
$1,478

The mail earnings on this route are $89 per month, or $3.44 daily. The service for the Government is performed in an apartment car fifteen feet long, and closed pouch service, four trains carrying mail daily, except Sunday, giving an actual return to the railroad of three and a half cents per mile run, or about one passenger fare at three cents per mile although the Government demands the use of a 15-foot car fitted up as a post office in which a postal clerk is carried free, and this car must be lighted, heated and kept in repair, and carried over the route each way daily, except Sunday.

On this branch the actual earnings on passengers per passenger car are 55 cents per car mile.

The post office apartment car equals one-quarter of a passenger car, and the mail should, on this basis, earn at least 14 cents per mile, but it does earn, for all the mail service, at the rate of 3-½ cents per mile, less the expense of delivering mail to and from post offices.

During the weighing period the mails are carried on 90 days and weighed on 90 days, but under the Cortelyou order, these aggregate weights are divided by 105 and the result is called the "average" and forms the basis of pay on this route for four years.

This mail service in a traveling post office on an expensive railroad is paid about one-third the rate per mile that the Government pays to a rural route carrier who carries an average of 25 pounds of mail.

II.

Route 157,028. Odell to Concordia, Kansas. 72 Miles. Average Daily Weight, 282 Pounds.