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Show WHAT'S A PENNY WORTH ? What's a penny worth? It's the smallest of small change. So the extra penny it now takes to mail a first class letter let-ter probably doesn't seem very significant to most people. Businessmen take a differ ent view. For instance, officials for American Oil Company, a marketer mar-keter of petroleum products, estimate that the increase in postal rales that took c-i'foct Jan. 7 adds nearly a half million mil-lion dollars a year to their cost of doing business. Final figures on 1932 expenses ex-penses show that American Oil paid the Post Office Department Depart-ment some S2.25 million to carry company mail. More than a million dollars vent for postage to handle billing and correspondence with credit card customers. Re-. Re-. gional sales centers accounted tor nearly another million. The remainder came from other oth-er American Oil operations such s refineries, pipelines and terminal locations. With the new rates in effect American Oil officials estimate the '63 company-wide postage bill will be 16 to 20 higher. high-er. In short, American Oil officials will have to find an additional $360,000 to $450,000 to pay for handling the mail the company needs to keep its complex business operating efficiently. ef-ficiently. That's not small change by any stretch of the imagination. To a company like American Ameri-can Oil that must try and is trying hard to improve its rate of return on investment, figures like these cast a new and revealing light on what a penny is really worth. |