There is evidence that Armour often makes his cars run 300 miles and even 400 miles a day. He compels the railroads to push his cars day and night whether loaded or empty. Most freight cars are loaded both going and coming, which greatly lowers the cost of transportation, but Armour requires the railroads to rush his cars back empty at full speed without waiting for any return load. Ordinary freight trains go on a side-track and wait till the Armour cars go by. The railroads sometimes even side-track passenger trains in order that a meat train may be rushed by to make a little more profit for the Beef Trust. Armour’s system of checking his cars by means of his agents stationed at icing points along the principal roads keeps his central office constantly informed of the whereabouts of every car. If a train has lost time, if an Armour car is side-tracked anywhere the Armour office asks over the wires: “What’s the matter?” And if a railroad agent does not do as Armour bids he may lose his position as a consequence. More than one railroad man, high in authority, has been dismissed because he did not obey the Beef Trust. If offences accumulate, some day the railroad finds that Armour has diverted his entire business to a rival line which will hurry his cars and otherwise obey his orders. What chance has the small shipper against such a system? He may own private cars, but he cannot make them run, nor can he obtain exclusive contracts such as Armour has on many roads, nor make the railroads collect excessive icing charges for him, nor hold up the roads in any other way; on the contrary, they are more likely to hold him up. The result of high speed and the mileage rate loaded or empty, is that refrigerator cars earn for their owners an average of $25 a month, and cars engaged in the export meat trade from Chicago frequently get $30 and upward per month from the railroads in mileage. This is enough to pay the whole cost of the refrigerator car in 3 years, and its maintenance in the meantime.[268] Private stock cars in some cases net their owners 50 percent a year on the invested capital, repaying the cost of the cars in 2 years, above operating expenses.[269] The average mileage of through stock trains on the principal lines exceeds 100 miles a day, yielding to the owner of such cars over 60 cents a day. This is three times what the railroads pay each other for railroad cars in use on a road other than the owning railway. A railroad receives 20 cents a day for each day that one of its own freight cars is on another road, while the same railroad pays the car companies 60 cents a day for the use of a stock car, and $1 a day for the use of an Armour refrigerator car in the dressed-beef business.[270] Yet a well built modern freight car costs more than the average private stock car, and nearly as much, many of them quite as much, as the average refrigerator car.[271]