For 22 packinghouses which operated their own crews, total picking costs for

oranges were 32.04 cents per box, and for grapefruit 24.17 cents. Total picking costs

for tangerines averaged 73.92 cents per box. As with the citrus dealers, the principal

items of picking costs of the fresh fruit packinghouses were labor, gas and oil, repairs,

licenses, insurance and depreciation. These items were usually complete in the records

of the packinghouses, but some of the smaller overhead items were not complete. Fre-

quently such items as telephone, office expense, lights and water, interest, management

and office salaries were charged entirely to the packing operation and none allocated to

picking and hauling.

 The last three columns of Table 1 show the combined average costs for citrus

dealers for the complete operation of moving fruit from the tree to the cannery, which

includes buying and selling, picking and hauling. This is obtained by adding together

the costs allocated to the separate services. Oranges cost 42.69 cents per box, grape-

fruit 33.95 cents and tangerines 88.44 cents from tree to cannery.

 For fresh fruit packinghouses, the last section of Table 2 shows the combined costs

of picking and hauling each type of fruit for 1956-57. Since packinghouses do not

normally have buying and selling costs for unpacked fruit this section of Table 2 is not

entirely comparable with the last section of Table 1.

 Many citrus firms, both dealers and packers, contract with other operators to pick

and haul, or both. Contract picking and hauling was separated from the firm's own crews.

Rates or amounts paid contractors are not shown in Tables 1 or 2 because of the difficulty

of determining the exact service performed and the kind of fruit. Contracted picking

for 1956-57 cost 27.2 cents per box, and contracted hauling averaged 10.84 cents, but

the kind of fruit is unknown.