Expenses

Total Expenses Years 1986-1997 (percent change) Expense growth has been held to under 5 percent for six straight years.

Our discussion of Operating Expenses will focus on the two operating expense categories that make up over 84 percent of our total expenses in 1997. These categories are personnel Compensation and Benefits, and Transportation. The chart below presents the relative proportions of our major expense categories.

Analysis of Expenses (in percent) Nearly 77 percent of our expenses are personnel compensation and benefits.
	1997	1996	1995
Personal compensation	59.47	59.24	60.97
Personal benefits	17.35	18.39	18.53
Transportation	7.05	6.80	6.61
Supplies and services	3.91	4.10	3.52
Interest on deferred retirement	2.80	2.64	2.59
Depreciation and write-offs	2.99	2.45	2.16
Other	1.72	2.14	1.29
Rent and communications	1.52	1.47	1.38
Vehicle/building maintenance	0.96	0.92	0.93
Utilities	0.77	0.75	0.76
Interest	0.54	0.67	1.07
Advertising	0.47	0.43	0.19
POD workers' compensation costs	0.45	–	–
Total	100.00	100.00	100.00

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