To the Editor:

Recently I helped a neighbor clear out material from a house where the husband died and the children were helping their mother. I drove my pickup to the landfill site in Dafter and paid the minimum charge of one ton for 700 pounds of material. I figured my load to be average of others doing similar disposal (mostly small contractors). I figured my load at approximately 160 cubic feet of material, which I placed into a container of approximately 8 feet by 40 feet by 7 feet, or about 2,240 cubic feet in size. I figured it would take about 14 pickup trucks to fill the container.

Upon weighing out, I was also charged more than $5 as a "fuel service charge." If all 14 pickups paid the same, that's $70-plus for the Waste Management company to carry the container the 1,000 feet to the top of the hill to empty it. That's charging us approximately $280 per mile fuel charge.

Even my old pickup gets at least 10 miles per gallon. I drove semi nationwide for years and got seven to eight miles per gallon hauling 80,000 pounds. Wow! How I wished I could have been paid that $280 per mile.

We get so used to being charged for this and charged for that, that we just get used to it. Robert Cataline Hessel