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 heard about our LLV’s catching fire in the last few years. I suppose it has to do with parts maybe rusting and wiring becoming frayed. They also mentioned possibly fuel leaking out which could ignite the fire. The only thing I know about the fires from social media or the news. It would definitely be scary since you can see how thoroughly the vehicles were damaged or incinerated. Fortunately, if all goes to plan we should start to get fleet replacement vehicles in 2022 (according to the link you sent me). I’m not sure how many years it would take to manufacture 180k vehicles or whatever the contract is for. Our current fleet of LLVs were manufactured between 1987-1994. Thanks for bringing this video to my attention.
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Kara, the unofficial motto of the USPS is: Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
It isn’t true at all. For the most part, we strive to get all of the mail routes delivered each day. Due to bad weather or staffing shortages or maybe some other reasons, we don’t always deliver the mail. The LLVs are infamously poor to drive in when there is snow on the roadway. They don’t get much traction and fishtail easily. Add an incline or decline and it becomes that much more difficult.
There was a snowstorm recently in the NY Metropolitan Area where I work. The storm increased in intensity during the morning while I was out delivering the mail. At around 1130 I received a text message on my scanning device which said “all carriers return to the post office”. We didn’t finish delivering our mail routes that day. We aren’t superheroes and I think it’s smarter for us to suspend delivery when it isn’t safe to continue so we may get home and safely return to work the next day to deliver the mail.
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I’m not really sure but that it a good question. My career goal before I wound up at USPS was to be an air traffic controller. I love aviation and thought it would be a great career. It turned out not to be the right fit for me. While I was greatly disappointed at the time I am quite satisfied now with where I landed. I also like working with the public and I have a love for NY City so maybe i could work at one of their cultural institutions or be a guide. For the skill level I have and the stress levels I can handle (not good with stress and responsibility), being a letter carrier is probably the best choice i could have made. A lot of it was by luck and a father who was always pro-civil service or Government jobs.
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I will get out of my vehicle (known as a dismount) and walk to the mailbox and deliver the mail. I don’t know that we are required to do so and if it’s a chronic issue, I’m sure that it is annoying. Fortunately, the route I deliver doesn’t have any curbside deliveries so I only come across this scenario when filling in on other routes I just don’t like bringing back mail to the PO that should be delivered. Among my coworkers, I think it’s a mixed bag. Some will deliver to each house, no matter if the box is blocked or not. Others will skip the house and try again the next day or maybe even suspend delivery to make a point. One thing to keep in mind is that the owner of the car which is blocking a mailbox may not have anything to do with the address whose mailbox is blocked. If it’s a public street, anybody has a right to park anywhere barring any local restrictions.
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I have a feeling that you might be correct about this. I have been thinking about that in the past but never decided to look into it. Maybe one day this whole site will disappear and my nearly 1200 questions answered will be for nothing. I never hear from the the siren operatoes though it never really concerned me. The sire never seems updated. I just checked their twitter account. The last posting or retweet was from 6 years ago. I certainly feel like a bit of a sucker to have continued here for so long. I’d probably have reached more people by doing a Reddit AMA. Thanks for bringing up this subject.
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Mike, I’m not saying it hasn’t happened, but I’ve never heard of a USPS vehicle being pulled over by a police officer for missing a license plate. Each vehicle has an ID number and I think that suffices as a license plate. I imagine if I rcvd a ticket for that I would give it to my supervisor and let them deal with it. That being said, I wouldn’t mind if we got held to the same driving standards as everyone else and were pulled over for moving violations. I don’t even hear of that happening too often. I drive the USPS just as I do with my own vehicle. That means obeying all traffic rules, driving defensively, and courteously. Fortunately, I’ve never been involved in an MVA while at work, but it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Nobody is above the law or above making an error.
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Usually, the second person in the truck would be a supervisor doing a route delivery observation. This happens about one time per year. In our office, the supervisor often follows along with their own vehicle and may walk near you while you make your deliveries. Other times it may be a trainee who is “shadowing” a seasoned employee to learn how the job is done. In the larger delivery vehicles there is sometimes a package helper to make parcel deliveries easier and possibly more efficient. In my office, I rarely see 2 employees in one vehicle so I can’t comment much further.
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