Mailman (City Letter Carrier)

Mailman (City Letter Carrier)

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.

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Last Answer on February 18, 2022

Best Rated

are mailmen suppose to come to the door with a registered letter or just leave a card for you to go to the post office to get it?

Asked by Cindy almost 12 years ago

As far as I know if a letter requires a signature to be delivered (i.e. registered or certified), the letter carrier should make an attempt to get a signature at the intended address and not just leave a PS3849 Notice of Attempted Delivery. You may call the Post Office to have the item redelivered and you may leave the signed notice for the carrier to pick up and leave the registered item if all parties feel comfortable doing that.

Some of my mail gets "this person has moved" and returned. My local post office said they straightened it out. But it is still happening. Do some post offices still have me listed as "moved", if yes: How do I tell all post offices I haven't moved?

Asked by lil-buddy over 10 years ago

As far as I know, there is no other PO besides the one that delivers your mail that could do anything with the information whether you have moved or not. Other mail processing facilities just sort the mail according to ZIP code to get it on its way to your local PO. They aren't concerned with the name on the mail. Do you live with anybody else who may write that on the mail and put it back in the outgoing mail? As long as your local PO knows you haven't moved, nobody should be having your mail returned to the sender. You could also put a note and tape it inside your mailbox saying "(your name) is a valid name to deliver here".

can you go to your local post office to see if something you were waiting for showed up after the mailman left to deliver your mail that day?

Asked by anagain about 12 years ago

Generally, no. The reason is that if an item shows up after the mailman has left for their route, the new incoming mail may not even have been sorted yet. Furthermore, most POs have policy against giving out mail over the counter that is intended to be delivered by a letter carrier. I can't speak as to what your specific PO would do, but generally the answer would be no as stated above.

My question was can mailmen take things out of letters. Because twice, I found a letter that was supposed to have a gift in it, but there was a huge hole in the envelope and the gift seemed to taken out

Asked by Sarah about 11 years ago

It is strictly against the law for any letter carrier to take anything out of the mail. That would be considered tampering with the mail. If the gift was just put in a paper envelope and the envelope was bulging it is possible that if it went through mail processing equipment the machine could have damaged the envelope and caused the gift to fall out. It would be hard to prove that an item was stolen out of the mail, but if this happened on multiple occasions and you suspect something wrong, I'd report it a delivery supervisor at your local post office. I don't think much will be done about it but at least they'd have a record of it. I would hope that any theft from the mail by USPS employees is rare and dealt with in a severe and prompt manner if proven. 

I live in a circle, there has been situations that my mail got stolen and I can't see my mailbox from my residence because it sits before the circle starts, can I move my mailbox to the front of my house?

Asked by Wejo over 11 years ago

I'm sorry to hear about your mail being stolen. I don't know about moving the location of your mailbox. I am just speculating, but if you live in a circle where the mailbox sits at the street and is serviced by a letter carrier from their vehicle where they just stick their arm out and you want to move the box to a location where the same process can still be accomplished, I don't see why it would be a problem. Does the carrier drive by your house anyway, or do they not come in the circle because all of the mailboxes are at an area where they can avoid coming into the circle. If that's the case, I am not sure it would be allowed to be moved "inside the circle". It's important that the approach to the mailbox is not blocked on any regular basis so the carrier doesn't have to "dismount" from their vehicle to put the mail in the mailbox. I'm not saying they wouldn't dismount to deliver the mail, but the general idea of mailboxes at the street is so the mail can be delivered directly from the postal vehicle. For further clarification, I'd recommend calling or visiting your local post office and speaking with a delivery supervisor.

How many times is mail picked up at the post office and also does mail being sent off in the morning get to its destination sooner

Asked by kay about 11 years ago

I'm sure each Post Office has a slightly different dispatch schedule for mail being sent off to a P&DC (Processing and Distribution Center). I think that our Post Office dispatches the mail 2-3 times per day. I don't think that something mailed in the morning gets to its destination sooner than a letter which is collected prior to our final dispatch which is usually around 6PM. We have service levels which basically say if a letter or parcel is mailed on a certain date (before a final dispatch) that it should reach its destination by a certain date. This is usually 1-3 days depending on the distance between the origination and destination Post Office and the class of mail that is being sent (1st Class, Priority, Express, Parcel Post, etc).

I was keeping a piece of mail in the mailbox that had been delivered to my address for our old roommate to pick up. After about 2 days, the letter was gone but the roommate had not picked it up. Would USPS take the letter back and return to sender?

Asked by ST almost 11 years ago

ST, I'm not sure what happened in your situation. Some USPS carriers may be trained or take it upon themselves to do things differently than others. If the letter carrier saw the one letter in your mailbox but the rest of the mail taken in (by you), they might think it's mail for a person no longer living there and return it to the sender "Attempted, Not Known" or "Unable to Forward" or something else. It seems likely that this is what happened and the letter wasn't stolen though I can't says for sure.