Now, I'm not one to disagree with my boss, BUT...

On the rural part of my paper route, I have three houses which range from a half a mile to two miles out on the caliche roads here. Now, in fair weather, that's not a problem, and when I began my paper route, I even undertook the "mudding" through the caliche with some gusto.

Until that fateful day when the caliche had, unbeknownst to me, caked up on the back of my radiator, blocked the airflow and caused a 5 inch slit in the tank. I had to purchase a new radiator, and that was really only the beginning of my problems. The transmission had overheated, and in doing so, some of its internal workings were damaged. I changed the fluid and filter, and checked the airflow, but the car will not go more than 10 miles without overheating (it's a 12 mile drive just to get TO town). As a result, I do not go down the caliche road when the roads are like primordial ooze, and two of my three customers have no problems with this.

The problem is the third customer, who lives at the far end of this two mile jaunt. She has called the paper the last two days screaming because I won't drive the two miles out to deliver her paper. I am currently using a borrowed vehicle (the car I bought to replace the original car is parked with blown headgaskets), and am unwilling to ruin another car, be it borrowed or my own, on the destructive mess that is her road following rain. Neither she nor the paper provide my vehicles, and it's simply not worth the $2 per month that a single customer on the route brings. That won't even pay for the necessary $1 a day hosing down at the washbay to prevent another destroyed vehicle, even when the other 2 customers on this road are factored in.

And people wonder why good carriers are a commodity.