Note 270 — Chapter XXVI · PRIVATE-CAR ABUSES.
Reading edition
I. C. C. Rep. 1903, p. 24. Sometimes the payment for a refrigerator car is much more than $1 a day. James J. Hill says: “If we take another railway company’s car, we pay 20 cents a day for it for the time we have had it, and we are in a hurry to get it back; and we load the other man’s car back if we have anything to put in it. That is always understood. But they do not want anything put in their cars. They say: ‘Hurry it back; get it around quickly, and pay us, in place of 20 cents a day, three-fourths of a cent a mile.’ They used to ask a cent a mile, but I think that has been abandoned.”
“Senator Newlands. How much does that amount to a day, say at the rate of a cent a mile?
“Mr. Hill. If they got a cent a mile and we hurried that car through to the coast, we would take it about 300 miles a day, so that they would get about $3 a day for the car.
“Senator Newlands. So that in the one case you pay 20 cents?
“Mr. Hill. And in the other we pay $3.
“Senator Newlands. And the private car-lines you pay $3.
“Mr. Hill. Yes—well, $3 would be the extreme figure. We will say $2.50.” (Sen. Com. 1905, p. 1505.)