92 THE MARKETING OF WHOLE MILK 



each night. An oversight then means that no milk is 

 delivered, whereas in the daytime the driver would have 

 rung the bell if no ticket had been put out. Moreover, 

 with night delivery the ticket system requires occasional 

 return trips for the purpose of selling tickets. In the better 

 sections, of course, a check is frequently left in the bottle 

 to pay for tickets. 



In comparing ticket and other systems, several factors 

 are involved, the principal ones being losses from bad 

 debts, time of driver and his equipment used in making 

 collections or sales, interest on outstanding accounts or 

 on money paid in advance, and cost of tickets and of cleri- 

 cal help required by the respective systems. All of the 

 above items, however, are difficult of accurate comparison. 

 The loss on bad debts is entirely eliminated where tickets 

 are sold for cash in advance. Under other methods such 

 losses sometimes run as high as 2 per cent or more of sales. 

 Time lost in making collections may be an important item. 

 With night delivery, necessitating as it does one or perhaps 

 several trips to the same house for collections, valuable 

 time of man and outfit may be wasted in collecting one or 

 two dollars. The writer has found numerous instances 

 where from 10 to 25 per cent of a driver's time was spent 

 in making collections from the retail trade. Once custom- 

 ers are used to the cash ticket system, practically all the 

 waste of time may be eliminated. In the summer of 191 8 

 the writer made the estimate that in Columbus at that 

 time the system of selling on account cpst from .23 cent 

 per quart to .8 cent per quart more than the cash ticket 

 system. 



That a large amount of duplication esasts in the de- 

 livery of milk has been shown by practically every study 

 that has been made. The following table showing the 



