Dividend checks continue to get fatter in corporate America, as more companies jack up their distribution rates.

Readers of the Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at some of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.

Let's start with Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG). The consumer products juggernaut behind Ivory soap, Crest toothpaste, and probably several items in your cupboard or bathroom drawer is increasing its quarterly distributions by 7% to $0.562 a share. Investors should be used to this by now. Procter & Gamble has come through with 56 consecutive years of hikes.

Mosaic (NYSE: MOS) isn't just making crops grow. The phosphate and potash specialist is also fertilizing its dividend checks in a major way. Mosaic's new quarterly rate of $0.125 a share is 150% better than the nickel per share it was harvesting every three months.

Dow Chemical (NYSE: DOW) is also cutting fatter checks. Armed with a portfolio of thousands of products in its specialty chemical, advanced materials, agro-sciences and plastics businesses, Dow's boosting its quarterly disbursements by 28% to $0.32 a share.

Finally we have Plains All American Pipeline (NYSE: PAA) continuing its gushing ways. The limited partnership's new quarterly payout of $1.045 a share may be just 2% higher than its previous dividend, but that's usually a moving target here. Plains All American has increased its distributions in 30 of the past 32 quarters. Yes, the partnership's yield has ticked higher 30 times over the past eight years.

Checks and balances
Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. The newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.

Want to see what is being recommended these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.

If you want to track these stocks to see if and when they hike their payouts again, consider adding them to MyWatchlist.