I think everyone has their ups and downs to their counties and/or townships, as you might say.  We also have had indexing of assignments change by some the clerks and that is what is causing somewhat of "what is she talking about" with companies who may read what I say but think they know different.  Some of our clerks have started to put assignments under the Grantor's names including bank to bank - but that is only in the last 2-3 years and only if it has the Grantor's name on the assignments and releases - many of them don't.  As far as mileage per day, anyone in Texas is looking more at a 300-350 miles per day trip - double of the smaller states and in David Bloys case where he runs rural areas alot - you are looking up to 600-900 miles a day.  Sometimes he drives out the night before so he can start his day back in first thing in the morning.  We don't luck out with townships inbetween or one day its only 20 miles because of the township - it will always be that 50 miles no matter what.  My example 19 in one and 1 in another is very rare - I run 8 counties with special assignments in even more counties - done a highway expansion project 3 hours away - a title company turned it down after "trying" to do the project and the surveying/engineering company that I do local work for asked me if I would go down.  Luckily, I have a father who lived within 30 miles of the project so I went and stayed over night with him and completed the project in 1 1/2 days.  I don't do that often as I can't really be out of town for the sake of my other clients but I will do it for my very dedicated clients.  Clients that given a $5.00 here or there would never switch from me.  Actually this surveying firm has brought 2 more into my business since everytime one of the surveyors leave and start with someone else - they convince the new firm that I am the person to use.  In today's times you can't get a better client then that.  I actually had a national vendor manager who left bring me on another company too.  Called me up.  Oh I forgot I wanted to also tell you that our cities are so big that we cannot even depend on them being in one county - try that for an exercise - at least you know where you are going - the city of Dallas - the one with 2,300,000 people - parts of it are in Denton County, Dallas County, Tarrant County and Collin County.  Each time an order is given we have to make sure they are assigned to the right county first or the entire drive could be worthless.  Now to drive to all four of those counties would take over 4 hours.  Almost every city has at least 2-3 overlapping counties.  That makes a difference in getting tax information too - sometimes I have to get it from the county, the indiv school and the indiv city because the property is in one county and the city is in another county.   And then here in Texas some of our school taxing districts take off during the holidays with the schools.  And we have to complete a search and REMEMBER to turn in the taxes again when the tax office reopens a week later and send it to our clients.  I can understand your nightmare about scheduling but we have the same here - all of our counties have different holidays - they at least started giving abstractors a holiday schedule this past year and that has help.  But they decide that they can close the office for 3 hours for a party and you arrive and you can't do the work.  I have counties on a particular day of the week don't open up till a particular time and some that close during their lunch hours.  I am glad we are talking about this - these are things they companies need to know.  We have had major problems with computers going down in Dallas county the last year or so - for an entire afternoon.  Luckily some of my friends have seen me in another county that have been there and say don't go to Dallas they are down again.  Can you imagine how ticked off we are when we just drove there and paid $4.00 to park?  But then again that is what I am telling you all - these are all costs of doing business and need to be part of a service fee.  No business runs smoothly - everything has to be considered when setting fees.