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.
All of our vehicles have heat. I don’t think we could survive in the colder climates without it. The LLVs (Long-life vehicle), which has been the majority of our delivery fleet since the mid-1990s, don’t have AC. The newer vehicles, which are likely to be coming on line in the next 2-5 years will have air conditioning. In office where I work, some carriers use Dodge Promasters which have AC as well.These trucks are left hand drive (like most vehicles in the US) so can only be used on walking routes where delivery is made to businesses or the front door of residences.
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This is true to a point. There are no absolutes with regard to driving in inclement weather. I drive a Grumman LLV which is what the vast majority of our motorized fleet is comprised of. Most of them were manufactured in the 1990s. All of our vehicles have heaters and fans. They may not always operate optimally but they are equipped with them. I don’t know of any LLVs that have air conditioning. We do have some new Dodge ProMasters which have AC but they can’t be used on driving routes because they are left-hand drive vehicles. If there is any decent accumulation of snow or ice on the road, the LLVs are dangerous to operate as they don’t have much road traction. I’d be worried about driving on any incline or decline in a snow or ice-covered road. Our basic mantra is that if we feel it’s unsafe to deliver the mail for any reason we can bring it back to the PO and tell a supervisor about the reason for non-delivery. Within the next few years, we likely are getting fleet replacement vehicles. I’m pretty sure they will have air bags and AC, and hopefully a back-up camera. They will hopefully be safer than the vehicles we currently drive.
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Henry, I can’t actually picture what that truck looks like and I don’t know what it is used for. If I had to guess it may have been some type of maintenance vehicle that the USPS used for building or vehicle maintenance. It doesn’t seem to be any type of delivery vehicle that I am familiar with. If you want to do some more research, there is a Smithsonian National Postal Museum and maybe their research or archivist staff would know more about it. They possibly charge a fee for doing research but I can’t be sure. Their website is postalmuseum.si.edu
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Jeffrey, I don’t know the official answer to this question. In the post office where I work, the carriers who collect mail front the blue collection boxes generally aren’t delivering mail on any specific postal route. They probably aren’t even looking at the destination address when they collect the mail. I’m pretty sure most mail that is collected from the blue mailboxes gets sent to the a processing and distribution center. Very little, if any, local mail is intercepted and delivered without it ever leaving our local PO. I hope this answers your question. Thanks for participating in the Q and A ?
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I have come across the same situation while delivering mail and getting a sampling request for an address that is either on Hold or Vacant. I don’t know what the proper procedure is and the management in my office has never addressed this as far as I know. I also don’t know if anybody has asked about it. If I were in that situation, This is how I answer: Yes, the address is on my route. When it asks me to scan the flats/letters, I just hit enter and “No more to Scan”. To repeat, I can’t say this is the correct procedure, but this is what I do in that situation. Thanks for your question.
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I have yet to see that happen, though I wish the quality of service was focused on. If a customer were to complain about chronic misdeliveries, a supervisor will likely mention it to the letter carrier and ask them to be more careful. If the problem persisted, the supervisor may ask to verify the mail each day for the customer who complained about misdeliveries
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This is a very thorough question and i don’t know that I can give you an absolute answer, but I can try. I can assure you that any mail given to a clerk at PO or out in a collection box (blue box) or picked up by a letter carrier from your residence will go the same day to the mail processing plant in Columbus, OH. I guess an exception would be is if the letter carrier picked up the mail so late in the day due to our staffing shortages that the mail may not be dispatched from your local post office to the regional processing center. I haven’t seen this happen too often but I can’t speak for any office other than the one I work with. Another thing to point out is that there is possibly more than one truck per day that takes outgoing mail from your PO to the Columbus mail processing facility. I’m not sure about your office. I still don’t think for the most part it would make a difference if the mail was dropped off at the PO or picked up at your house. Thanks for your question, Roger.
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