We are getting a new mail lady.....poor thing doesn't know whats coming her way. Unfair USPS policy
My mail lady said she is taking a route that is coming open to get the provided vehicle they give to do that route (she is tired of maintaining the extra cars she has just to do her job.) I don't understand how or why it has became the responsibility of the postal workers to have a vehicle to deliver the mail on some routes??? That seems so unfair to me.
The gal that is thinking about taking on my route drives a CAR. You cannot drive a car to pick up the things we ship. I have 30 boxes normally on Tuesdays.....most of them rifle boxes. So you have to drive a van or SUV to get our shipments. I asked if she warned her about the route and its special needs and she said she told her, but she doesn't know if she listened.
I'm going to miss my mail lady. She is still with us for now. We have been spoiled. She calls us on her cell to let us know she is coming a bit early, brings us supplies we need like the clear packet things that hold our labels on the boxes, sits and gossips with me for 10 minutes when she has interesting news....just an above and beyond person.
The gal that is thinking about taking on my route drives a CAR. You cannot drive a car to pick up the things we ship. I have 30 boxes normally on Tuesdays.....most of them rifle boxes. So you have to drive a van or SUV to get our shipments. I asked if she warned her about the route and its special needs and she said she told her, but she doesn't know if she listened.
I'm going to miss my mail lady. She is still with us for now. We have been spoiled. She calls us on her cell to let us know she is coming a bit early, brings us supplies we need like the clear packet things that hold our labels on the boxes, sits and gossips with me for 10 minutes when she has interesting news....just an above and beyond person.
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Judy was a rural carrier for 37 years and used her own vehicle the entire time. She was paid the going government rate for mileage. This covered all maintenance costs and helped to pay for a new Blaser when she wore the old one out. Now that she has retired the office she worked at has gone to those crappy box van postal vehicles. Under powered, 2 wheel drive, almost no heat in the winter and like an oven in the summer, but do have right hand drive. Judy spent 37 years driving from the passenger seat so she could reach the mailboxes. You don't see many vehicles with the drivers seat looking brand new but the passenger seat worn out.:) Bob 3 -
Training a new mail person is a real thing. I do it to every new delivery person. I call it "Social Engineering". 0 -
She will be in for a big surprise.
I was looking around and I saw a Right hand drive kit costs about 2K and that is if you install it.
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My buddy/next door neighbor is a rural carrier. He has a Jeep Wagoneer, that he delivers in. Controls on both side. We joke about messing with the Officer if we were to be pulled over, as to who was driving. 😁
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drivers reimbursed for mileage and all of the rural route drivers here have AWD or 4wd type vehicles...post office has a GOOD retirement setup...buddy of mine is currently running a township grader and as our little post office is about to retire several he is chomping at the bit to get hired there....and veterans get a better chance 0 -
I actually looked into one of those kits before Judy retired. She didn't want to have anything to do with right hand drive as the steering wheel would get in the way of handling the mail before she put it in the boxes. BobSam06 said:She will be in for a big surprise.
I was looking around and I saw a Right hand drive kit costs about 2K and that is if you install it.
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Betty, our mail lady bought herself a new Jeep Wrangler four door with right hand drive. She keeps a big box of Milk Bones and my dogs go running to meet her when she comes. She only comes to the house when she has a package. Our mailbox is at the road. 0 -
I would Imagine your new carrier isn't totally brand new. She's probably coming from a smaller route or has been working as a substitute for a while. Management will require her to have a appropriate vehicle. Those white box vans are called LLVs. LLV stands for long life vehicle. The one I drove was built in 1991. They may have plans to put an LLV on that route. That way they don't have to pay the mileage. And Bob-Judy, you are right. They are the absolute worst vehicle ever devised. I spent the last 5 yrs of my career in one. If you leave a note for your carrier, remember to put your name and address on it so she knows where it came from at the end of the day. 0 -
Are they the original boxes?Locust Fork said:
I have 30 boxes normally on Tuesdays.....most of them rifle boxes.
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How long will it take for you to run the new one off? 0 -
We had a random "temp" girl that did our route about a year ago. It was CRAZY. All the boxes were ready to go, but I was gone so Shelby was ready to deal with it when they showed up to pick them up. When I got back all the boxes were still here. Shelby asked if I wanted her to try to take them on to the post office, but she didn't know if they would be open by the time she got there. I said not to worry about it and we would deal with it the next day.
Somewhere around 8pm a car pulled up the drive.....someone I've never seen before. It was a young black lady an older lady and a couple kids. Even if I let them try they couldn't have gotten my boxes and I wasn't about to hand them over to this circus if they could have gotten them. I didn't know if anyone at the office knew she was still out running the route or if she had planned on just taking all the mail home with her. I told her just to skip me and I'd deal with it the next day.
I called the postmaster the next day and told them what happened. I understand things happen....but with what I'm shipping I'm not going to be a part of anything that isn't 100% on track. We never saw her again. I can't help but wonder if they just promoted her......from what I understand the bigger train wreck you are, the more apt you are to be promoted in the world.3 -
Things may have changed since 2009. In most cases, rural mail carriers provide their own vehicle and are paid the government compensation(57 cents per mile IIRC). In some areas, there may be "motorized city routes" that deliver to boxes some distances beyond "town". Those generally use USPS provided vehicles. There's a HUGE difference between the services each of these delivery options can or do provide. 0 -
I quit using my car when I realized I would have to get MUCH higher priced insurance to cover using it for hire. No way were they paying enough to cover that. It seemed like a good deal until I figured that in. 0 -
My now retired mail man was a farmer and Vietnam veteran, he drove a small station wagon as his route was rural and was always prepared to pickup or deliver odd size things. His car had dings and scratches from the right parking light on the front clear to the tail light, not sure if he removed the mirror or tore it off. He wasn’t going reach any farther than he had to LOL
He would pull in the drive and drop off stuff that wouldn’t fit in the box, only time we ever had to go to PO to pick stuff up is if we weren’t home and he knew it.
Our mailbox hangs on two chains so it would give when he tagged it.
and he ran studded tires year round.
Our new mail lady drives a right hand drive Jeep of some kind but she stays well away from the mail box.
Mule
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"I quit using my car when I realized I would have to get MUCH higher priced insurance to cover using it for hire. No way were they paying enough to cover that. It seemed like a good deal until I figured that in."
I can't say I've heard such a comment before. Grampa was still driving Model A Fords when he retired from "packin the mail" in 1960 and kept them running by cannibalizing a yard full of donors. During his rural carrier career, Dad drove whatever he could buy cheap and repair at home. He had a captive slave mechanic (ME) who did 90% of the vehicle and tire repairs. One of my rural carriers bought new vehicles and traded @ 100K miles(approx 1000 days on the route). Different perspectives of the same problem(excessive vehicle wear and tear).
I drive my POV for the same mileage allowance as rural mail carriers receive and upgrade my work vehicle approx every 3 years. I buy excellent condition 6-10 year old vehicles with under 100K which reduces my insurance and depreciation cost significantly. Currently I'm making 25-30 cents per mile over my cost of operation. The current vehicle pays for it's replacement by the time it's ready to be resold.0 -
BTW, Rural mail carriers are expected to provide a vehicle capable of handling the NORMAL mail load. Thirty boxes large enough to hold a firearm would NOT be considered a NORMAL load. If the previous carrier was providing this type of service, I certainly hope you were shipping double that during "mail count" so the carrier was properly compensated for the rest of the year.
FWIW, both Grampa and Dad were rural mail carriers (64 years of service between them) and I was a Postmaster for 25 years so barring any changes made since 2009, I'm very familiar with the ins and outs of USPS delivery and collection. Matter of fact, in the mid 90's I authored a tutorial on shipping firearms which was used by counter personnel in the mid-west Region.0 -
Mobuck said:BTW, Rural mail carriers are expected to provide a vehicle capable of handling the NORMAL mail load. Thirty boxes large enough to hold a firearm would NOT be considered a NORMAL load. If the previous carrier was providing this type of service, I certainly hope you were shipping double that during "mail count" so the carrier was properly compensated for the rest of the year.
FWIW, both Grampa and Dad were rural mail carriers (64 years of service between them) and I was a Postmaster for 25 years so barring any changes made since 2009, I'm very familiar with the ins and outs of USPS delivery and collection. Matter of fact, in the mid 90's I authored a tutorial on shipping firearms which was used by counter personnel in the mid-west Region.
Every year she gave me heads up when mail count weeks were coming so I could run a bunch of small auctions to get the numbers up. If you guys see me running crazy mess out of nowhere, you know why now.
These days large boxes and LOTS of boxes is the norm. I'm at the end of her route, so her SUV is nearly empty when she gets here......but......because of on line shopping, amazon, chewy, and every store selling everything these days the "normal" mail load is a large number of boxes. I don't think there are many days that she doesn't deliver a full SUV load before she gets to my house and picks up my things (that fills her then empty car back up.)0 -
Two things here. Ms. L. Fork do you submit a "Parcel Pick-up Request" in the morning you want your boxes picked up? It would probably prevent the carrier from forgetting. You do it online. It must be fairly simple to do, I would get two or three a day when I was working. And that thing about the "heads up" for the mail count could have gotten your carrier fired. We're not allowed to do that. And neither is management allowed to advise customers to avoid mailing during a mail count. 0 -
" And that thing about the "heads up" for the mail count could have gotten your carrier fired. We're not allowed to do that. And neither is management allowed to advise customers to avoid mailing during a mail count. "
YUP0 -
But still somehow all the mail disappears that week. No problem, they use the records from the rest of the year to determine your "demonstrated ability". The last route check I had was thrown out & they used the SHORTEST day of each month & averaged those twelve numbers to find my "demonstrated ability". I was supposed to get a route CUT from the route check & instead got added to. The new station manager wanted to know why I couldn't make it in eight hours & when I told him what happened he said that couldn't be & he would show me when I came back that evening. When I came back he said I was right. He said he couldn't change the route but he would see that I got street help. I told him not to bother & showed him the note on my desk where I had gotten the bid for another route to start the next week. I NEVER had a short street time after that until I retired. 3 -
I do taxes for a couple of mail carriers and they tell me they were reimbursed 70 cents/mile in 2019 instead of the standard mileage rate of 58 cents/mile. They both drive Jeep Cherokee's and are very happy with getting the government to pay for their vehicles. Drive 20k a year on route and government pays them $14k for it. Any amount they receive above their actual expenses are tax free. Sounds like a good deal for the carrier to me. 0 -
We schedule our pickups every week.....the carrier knows our standard days and typically has something we have to sign for anyway, but on the days we ship there is always a pick up. As far as the mail count thing....its VERY unfair that they pick a random week to figure out what someone's pay scale will be for the week. They know how many boxes, and pieces of mail the carriers pick up and they are playing some twisted game with their employees to not take the entire year's numbers into account to come up with a pay scale. Your power bill is regulated by a yearly average.....gas prices are done by the hour.....there is no way the postal service is so inept that they need to take a slice of time and figure up what a carrier should be paid. 0 -
I can see your point and with the computerised running of the mail service the post office does have a pretty good idea of the amount of mail. If you were a carrier would you take their word for it or insist on a mail count? It can be pretty complicated how they figure how many hours a route is rated at. Mileage, package delivery, package pickup, pieces of mail delivered and picked up, amount of mail sorted, signature required mail,... and so on. Even loading and unloading their vehicle. Routes can be rated so you work 5 days a week, 6 days then 5, or 6 days a week. Judy's route was usually rated 8 hours a day so she worked 5 days a week. If she got her work done in 30 hours she still got paid for forty. For a lot of the year I called it the best full time pay part time job you could get. So don't feel sorry for the carrier about mail count, it averages out. During mail count of you ship 20 packages and then take a month off the carrier still gets paid the same even tho you stopped shipping. BobLocust Fork said:We schedule our pickups every week.....the carrier knows our standard days and typically has something we have to sign for anyway, but on the days we ship there is always a pick up. As far as the mail count thing....its VERY unfair that they pick a random week to figure out what someone's pay scale will be for the week. They know how many boxes, and pieces of mail the carriers pick up and they are playing some twisted game with their employees to not take the entire year's numbers into account to come up with a pay scale. Your power bill is regulated by a yearly average.....gas prices are done by the hour.....there is no way the postal service is so inept that they need to take a slice of time and figure up what a carrier should be paid.0 -
Our route can be vastly different from week to week....because it all depends on who paid for their auctions and how many items we ran at any given time. There are a lot of weeks when we just have 20-30 auctions up and others that it is 75 items that will all end on Sunday. If they had mail count on one of the weeks we were really slow it could make her numbers 1/3 the norm easily. I just hate that my business affects someone else's pay rate without me having any real input on things. My carrier doesn't work for me, but I'm the person that sets her pay rate.BobJudy said:
I can see your point and with the computerised running of the mail service the post office does have a pretty good idea of the amount of mail. If you were a carrier would you take their word for it or insist on a mail count? It can be pretty complicated how they figure how many hours a route is rated at. Mileage, package delivery, package pickup, pieces of mail delivered and picked up, amount of mail sorted, signature required mail,... and so on. Even loading and unloading their vehicle. Routes can be rated so you work 5 days a week, 6 days then 5, or 6 days a week. Judy's route was usually rated 8 hours a day so she worked 5 days a week. If she got her work done in 30 hours she still got paid for forty. For a lot of the year I called it the best full time pay part time job you could get. So don't feel sorry for the carrier about mail count, it averages out. During mail count of you ship 20 packages and then take a month off the carrier still gets paid the same even tho you stopped shipping. BobLocust Fork said:We schedule our pickups every week.....the carrier knows our standard days and typically has something we have to sign for anyway, but on the days we ship there is always a pick up. As far as the mail count thing....its VERY unfair that they pick a random week to figure out what someone's pay scale will be for the week. They know how many boxes, and pieces of mail the carriers pick up and they are playing some twisted game with their employees to not take the entire year's numbers into account to come up with a pay scale. Your power bill is regulated by a yearly average.....gas prices are done by the hour.....there is no way the postal service is so inept that they need to take a slice of time and figure up what a carrier should be paid.0
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