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.
Thanks for the compliment PK. I've been delivering mail for more than 16 years now. I've had a lot of personal ups and downs, mostly off the job, but glad to have continued to work and have the job security of the USPS. If you mean delivering mail for 7 hours, I think that would be hard for most people. But if you mean 7 hours street time that is a bit different because then you'd factor in loading time,lunch and breaks and travel time to/from your route. The route I deliver is approximately 6:40 total but only 5:20 Apprx is actually delivering mail. It's not too exhausting except if the mail load is heavy. My hints are to try to be as organized as you can, don't engage in too much small talk with the customers, and get a good nights rest and have a healthy breakfast. That all works for me. Everybody is different plus the difficulty of the route may vary between cities. I deliver on a flat terrain besides walking up steps to the mailboxes. If you have to walk a lot of hills that could make you more tired. Good luck to you and what might be a 7-hour route could take you longer or shorter based on the above factors.
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Definitely. It's never been an issue as far as I know to take a bathroom break as needed even if it means leaving the street you are delivering mail on to go use a lavatory at a public business. That's what I usually do. I'll leave my route and go to a gas station or the public library that are near my route as needed. It doesn't have to be an emergency.
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In the LLV, which is the most common vehicle for delivery that is used, there is no second seat. The exception to that is that at our post office we up have 1 Long Life Vehicle with a seat in the cargo area which is behind the mail tray that is in the front left of the vehicle. We use that vehicle as a spare in case one breaks down or is needed by auxiliary help. The other reason it is used is when a supervisor comes with you for the day to inspect your route delivery. Sometimes they will follow you in their own car, but they often will just sit in the second seat. The cargo area opens up to the drivers area with a sliding door which I leave open all of the times.
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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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If you have received incorrect mail in your PO Box, you can do a few things. You can write on the envelope, "addressee unknown" and push it back through the PO Box so it lands on the floor or leave it in an outgoing mail collection box. Either way, the PO Box clerk should see that it doesn't belong to you after you have written on it and either forward it or return it to the sender. You could probably also keep the mail but that may not be ethical especially if it was important mail. I'm sure many PO Boxes get closed and the renter doesn't leave forwarding instructions.
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I am not sure why this happened and what will happen to your mail for the 3 days you mentioned. It should have been delivered until 10/8 as far as I know. After that, the forwarding should commence to your new address and will probably be a few more days before any forwarded mail arrives there. It's possible your "old" post office is holding the mail until 10/9 to forward it but I can't say for sure. I don't know if you have time to go to the PO to ask them why this happened and it's possible that by the time you find out it will almost be 10/9 and the mail will have been forwarded.
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It shouldn't be a problem to put on the correct address and new stamp and remail the letter in the same envelope. I'd recommend crossing out any bar codes that may have been printed below the address either on the front or back of the envelope. Also, please cross out or remove any markings that may say "return to sender". If you can, maybe a new envelope with the correct address would be better, but if you follow the above recommendations I think it would be okay to reuse the original envelope.
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