Milk-Hauling Rates: A Self-Imposed Constraint with Differential Effects Upon Large and Small Farms

Abstract

Costs impose restraints upon all activities. Certain costs chargeable to a sector of an industry–as for example, milk assembly and hauling costs–must be broken down from their total into the shares chargeable to individual users. When there is flexibility in this apportionment of cost shares, part of the burden upon the individual shipper becomes an industry-apportioned constraint upon individual firms, in this case dairymen-shippers. An alternative means of apportioning hauling costs is suggested, to retain large shippers in the conventional hauling system, and to sustain that system for the benefit of small dairymen.