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 would say that it is fine to leave a correctly addressed and posted letter in your mailbox for the carrier to take with them to mail. I would recommend that the letter be very visible so that the letter carrier can see the letter they are supposed to take with them.
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Not to my knowledge unless the USPS closes their local office or district. In all of my years working on Long Island, maybe 1 or 2 occasions have we been unable to deliver the mail, but I don't remember if we were expected to report to work or not. It's possible though that I may not have the correct information and that a local state of emegergency would excuse a letter carrier from reporting to work.
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I would wait several more days because letters do get missorted, or misdirected. Hopefully the letter will reach its destination in a few more days.
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I can't tell you for sure that he is doing something wrong but from what you say it seems like it. In our office we have 30 min for lunch plus a 10-minute break while we are on our routes. Also, we are allowed whatever is necessary to use a restroom. maybe the size of his route is small that he doesn't need a full day to deliver it all. If that is the case, many supervisors might pick up on that and try to give that carrier more work. If you were to call someone, i would first recommend calling a delivery supervisor or postmaster depending how large your PO is. To be honest, they may just thank you for calling and do nothing, or they may approach the carrier and tell them to not park that long in one place at 3:30 PM. I rarely hear complaints about this but if someone is being so wasteful of the USPS $, I don't see any issue with bringing it to the PO attention.
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It would probably be hard to live in NY on a CCA salary starting at $15/hr. I know some regular carriers work second jobs or work as much OT as available. My situation is a bit different as I am single, have low overhead (I own a co-op apt), and am very conservative with my spending. The NY metro area can be very expensive with regards to rental apts/houses and property taxes.
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I don't see why you couldn't mail a letter with a word crossed out as long as the other parts of the address were correct and clear. I am not sure if a jail would have any different rules on this. I know that jails are sometimes very specific in how to send mail, but don't know the ruling on this.
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You've come to the right place to ask questions about how a mailman's route works. I never mind answering questions but sometimes wish there was a search function on this page since the questions may have already been asked.
1) I have the same route all the time, but that is the fact that I have enough seniority at my post office to deliver the same route daily. When you start your postal career you are usually a CCA (City Carrier Assistant) or a Carrier Technician (also called a floater or T-6 or comp. carrier) that fills in for a carrier on a route when they are off, hurt, sick, or on vacation, etc. Since we deliver mail mail 6 days a week, but only are required to work 5 days per week, the Carrier Technician delivers the route on our weekly non-scheduled day.
2) If we are a regular carrier that has an assignment that is to deliver the same route daily (which is the case for me), the only reason my route would change would be if another route became vacant (usually due to a carrier retiring or transfering) and I requested to be moved to that assignment. The person who gets the vacant assignment is the most senior carrier that wishes to be reassigned. On rare occasions the local office goes through a route reorganization (I think there has been 1 in the 15 years I've been at the PO) when all of the assignments are put up for bid because so much of the routes have been territorially reorganized. Again, the assignments are awarded by seniority.
3,4) Yes, a regular workday is 8 hours and my route is set up to take about that long to deliver if there is an average volume of mail, parcels, decent weather, etc. On a lighter volume day, I would finish earlier and a heavier day would take longer than 8 hours to complete the route. This time also includes sorting some mail in the morning as well as some organizational duties when delivery of the route is completed. I'd say that the earliest to finish is maybe 15 minutes less than 8 hours and on a heavier day I may take 30-45 minutes extra to complete the route. There are days that can even take longer than that, but I'm just giving you the averages. In the office I work at in Long Island, NY, there is ample opportunity for overtime pay for those that want to work more than 8 hours/day or work on their non-scheduled day. Everything quoted here is for a city letter carrier. There are rural letter carriers (a different union and different rules even though their job is to deliver mail like me) who can go home as soon as they finish their routes. We are "on the clock" so if we finish in 7:15 we would still have to stay for 8 hours. That is a rare occurrence and we could do some prep work for the next day or help out another carrier if we have "down time". It is more common to have too much work than too little in my experience.
Thanks for all of your great questions and feel free to ask any more that you can think of.
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