Teamsters received good wages, especially when trade was brisk. From Brownsville to Cumberland they often received $1.25 a hundred; $2.25 per hundred has been paid for a load hauled from Wheeling to Cumberland.[1] The stage-drivers received twelve dollars a month with board and lodging. Usually the stage-drivers had one particular route between two towns about twelve miles apart on which they drove year after year, and learned it as well as trainmen know their "runs" today. The life was hard, but the dash and spirit rendered it as fascinating as railway life is now.
Far better time was made by these old conveyances than many realize. Ten miles an hour was an ordinary rate of speed. A stage-driver was dismissed more quickly for making slow time, than for being guilty of intoxication, though either offense was
- ↑ Before the era of the Cumberland Road the price for hauling the goods of emigrants over Braddock's Road was very high. One emigrant paid $5.33 per hundred for hauling "women and goods" from Alexandria, Virginia, to the Monongahela. Six dollars per hundredweight was charged one emigrant from Hagerstown, Maryland, to Terre Haute, Indiana.
