MailmanDave
17 Years Experience
Long Island, NY
Male, 43
I am a City Letter Carrier for the US Postal Service in NY. I've been a city letter carrier for over 17 years and it is the best job I've ever had. I mostly work 5 days per week (sometimes includes a Saturday) and often have the opportunity for overtime, which is usually voluntary. The route I deliver has about 350 homes and I walk to each of their doors to deliver the mail. Please keep in mind that I don't have authority to speak for the USPS, so all opinions are solely mine, not my employer.
I'd recommend taking it to the Post Office to make sure you are paying the right amt. You should just be able to put it in a letter size envelope (if it fits) and seal the envelope well. A proper address should also be written on the envelope where the bottom line is the Country of Destination (in your case either UK or Scotland). My quick search says that a 2 oz. letter to Scotland would be $2.21. If you are interested, you can go to www.usps.com and search for calculate a price and after answering several questions you can get a rate. 2 stamps would be equal to .98 so that would be insufficient to mail to Scotland. The minimum price for international mailing is $1.20 I think. Thanks for writing and I always say it's better to put too much postage on instead of too little. This way you lessen the risk of an item being returned for insufficient postage.
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I wouldn't recommend it unless you put a stamp on the envelope. The reason I say this is because the mailbox is only supposed to be used for US Mail with proper postage. That being said, if you leave the envelope in the mailbox clearly marked for the recipient company or resident with no postage it's possible the letter carrier would notice it and just leave it in the mailbox. That is what I would do but I can't speak for another letter carrier who isn't paying attention and just takes an envelope that looks like it could be outgoing mail. If you put the payment envelope in the mailbox with the address and postage it could be taken as outgoing mail but you can rest assured it will get to the recipient within a couple of days as a regular piece of mail. If possible, could you find an alternate place to put the payment or pay electronically?
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I'm not really sure how to answer this question because I would have suggested speaking with the letter carrier or delivery supervisor to make it clear where your apt. is and that you have no access to the packages in the front of the house as the gate is locked and you have no key. You have already done that according to your question. Is the rear apt. accessible to the letter carrier without the key? Where does the mail get delivered to? is it safe to go to the rear of the house? I agree that it's lousy that the carrier just throws the parcels to the front. Possibly a replacement letter carrier delivering the route doesn't realize they can go to the rear even though the packages say so. I would contact the PO and say that situation hasn't been resolved. I'm not sure how much help they will be but you deserve a clear answer and good service from us.
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It doesn't sound reasonable to me to even have a 14-mile walking route to begin with. That is walking more than a half-marathon daily. If you had zero mail to deliver and walked 14 miles you may be able to cover the route in 4 hours if walk at 3.5 MPH. That is faster than most people walk or at least about the average walking speed. Please tell your boyfriend to do the best he can, walk safely, and that the rate he is being asked to walk at is unrealistic. I just did a quick internet search for "average walking speed" and it is 3.1 MPH. This doesn't include delivering mail or any weight added if your boyfriend is carrying a satchel of mail. USPS management is known for being unreasonable at times.
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If a neighborhood has cluster boxes, it's usually a group of 6-30 addresses per cluster box. I actually made up that number. Where I deliver to cluster boxes, they range from 4-16 addresses per cluster box. As the letter carrier, I have a key which opens up the cluster box fully and then i can sort all of the mail for those addresses at one time. The boxes are usually well labeled inside (with the cluster panel open) to know where to put the mail. It's important for the letter carrier to know whether to put the mail either above or below the address if the slots are stacked vertically. I have seen my fellow letter carriers, and I'm sure myself make errors in deliveries to cluster boxes. I also live in an apartment building where mail is delivered into cluster boxes near the elevators. It can get more tedious than walking from door to door delivering mail but it is more efficient to deliver mail to cluster box units.
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Maybe for a day or so to see if anybody in the PO knows where that address is. Being that I deliver mail to the same neighborhood each day I know if a piece of mail has a valid address on it or not. It's possible if there is a replacement letter carrier delivering mail on a certain day and they can't find an address they will bring back the mail and then possibly the regular letter carrier on the route or somebody else would know where the address is. More often than not when mail has an address that can't be found (or the address doesn't even exist), we will endorse the mail as "NSN" which means "No Such Number" and it will be returned to the sender. The USPS has a national database of all valid addresses so we usually know at the PO if an address exists or not.
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I only drove a two ton van a few times in my postal career and that was many years ago. I didn't feel comfortable driving such a large vehicle but some of my co-workers don't mind it. I believe they aren't that hard to handle. As far as a woman of short stature I don't know if a lady carrier can drive it. We have females that drive the two ton postal truck and do it fine. They are probably 5' 5" or taller so I can't say how the visibility is for a short person. I don't know about the adjustability of the seat height.
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