Route 157,030, Kenesaw to Kearney (Nebraska), 24.68 miles. Average
Daily Weight 216 Pounds.
_Percentage _Percentage _Should Earn _Did
of Space of on Basis of Actually
Occupied._ Earnings._ Space Used._ Earn._
Passenger 83.79 88.90 $1,238 $1,314
Mail 9.37 6.02 139 89
Express 6.84 5.08 101 75
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$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 3-1/2 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.