The present system, however, does not always give good service. In April and May, 1905, for instance, hundreds and hundreds of cars of strawberries rotted at the stations in North Carolina for want of cars. The Armour Car-Line could not, or at least did not supply the needed cars, and as they have an exclusive contract with the Atlantic Coast Line no other cars are in the field. At one station only 4 cars were furnished in two days and 125 carloads of berries were left on the platform and the ground to spoil. The loss this season to the truck growers of this one section from insufficient car service is estimated at $600,000. (Sen. Com., 1905, pp. 2596, 2619.) Footnote 263: Some railroads have refrigerator lines of their own; the Pennsylvania, for example, and the Vanderbilts, the Goulds, the Santa Fe, the Northern Pacific, the Great Northern, etc., but they carry the private refrigerators also. Packers and other shippers owning cars insist on sending their goods in their own cars, and making the roads pay mileage. If the road refuses, the freight goes by some other line. “They compel us to take it in their cars and pay them for the use of them while our own cars stand on the side track, or else some other road gets the business.” (Testimony of James J. Hill, Sen. Com., 1905, pp. 1504–1505.) Footnote 264: See above, pp. 57, 58. Footnote 265: This mileage rebate system began long ago. Way back in the seventies the Erie and other roads allowed the Standard Oil Company to put tank cars on their tracks and paid it a mileage sufficient to pay back the values of the cars in less than 3 years. Footnote 266: The 1 cent rate applies to 15 to 25 percent of the total mileage of the cars and the ¾ cent rate to the remaining mileage. (Bureau of Commerce Rep. on Beef Industry, March, 1905, p. 273.) Footnote 267: Evidence in I. C. C. Hearings on private car-lines, April 28, 1904, p. 8. The Beef Trust report of the Bureau of Commerce, 1905, presents some conflicting evidence and sums up the case with a conservative estimate which places the average daily run of _all_ the cars owned by Armour and his associates and used in the beef business at 90 to 100 miles. In the same report, however, the refrigerator cars of the National Car-Line Company, and of the Provision Dealers’ Dispatch are reported as running 300 miles a day, and the cars of Swift and Company are estimated to make 373 miles a day in Iowa. (“Report of Commissioner of Corporations on the Beef Industry.” March 3, 1905, pp. 274–281.) Footnote 268: I. C. C. Rep. 1903, p. 23. Footnote 269: National Congress of Railway Commissioners, 1892, statement of the Committee on Private Cars, p. 52 _et seq._ The Lackawanna Line Stock Express Co., for example, netted 50 percent a year, or $343 per car. See also 4 I. C. C. Decis. 630. Footnote 270: