-8-

 rate for autos used, while some owned the cars and supplied fuel, repairs, etc.

 Miscellaneous expense included a great many items, some of which were sizeable

 sums for a few firms but averaged small amounts for all. This group is made up of

 advertising, public relations expense, dqes, subscriptions, donations, drivers' expense

 accounts, expense in connection with employment of labor from the British West Indies,

 business bad debts, fines, legal and auditing and many unclassified items of expense.

 The average cost of buying and selling citrus fruits for 1953-54 averaged 2.74

 cents per box for ten dealers (Table 1). The average volume was 1,206,203 boxes, The

 principal items of cost for providing this service were buyers' salaries and commissions,

 management costs, auto and travel expense and telephone and telegraph.

 Buying and selling unpacked fruit is not a normal function of fresh fruit packing-

 houses and no cost is shown for them in Table 2. Some of the packers did have fruit

 procurement costs.

 Hauling costs for 11 citrus dealers with an average volume of 886,702 boxes were

 9.50 cents per box for 1953-54. Total costs varied from 5.92 cents to 14.67 cents per

 box (Table 1). Twenty-three packinghouses operating their own trucks had an average

 cost of 9.67 cents per box. The variation in cost was from 5.96 cents to 16.58 cents

 per box (Table 2). The average volume for the packinghouses was 785, 198 boxes.

 Hauling cost per box does not appear to be related to total volume hauled. It is perhaps

 affected more by the volume per truck owned, and by average distance of haul, as well

 as by the proportion of box fruit and tangerines hauled. Based on estimates of operators

 and a few records of actual loadings obtained in 1951-52, grapefruit cost 9 percent less,

and tangerines 38 percent more to haul than oranges.

 Picking costs as shown in Tables 1 and 2 include all amounts paid for direct labor