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 believe it's allowed for a letter carrier to take home the mail vehicle to your own residence as long as it's within a reasonable distance of where you deliver the mail, I delivered mail to a letter carrier's home who delivered mail on a nearby route. He'd bring his vehicle home daily (I could set my watch by him) and eat lunch. Our normal lunch break is 30 minutes and that includes the time it takes to get to and from your postal route. If the carrier was there for more than 30 minutes, that may not be appropriate but I can't really speak for anything that I don't personally know since the rules are so often enforced arbitrarily.
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I wouldn't get too involved with this if I were you. I mean you wouldn't get in trouble as far as I know but you are correct in saying it's not your responsibility. Who advised you to throw out his junk mail? I would never do that as a USPS employee. No mail is junk to me. A mailer is paying my employer to deliver a service (mail) and I deliver it all. There are certain classes of mail which are non-forwardable and get a better speed of service, but it's all mail. I think the way I'd handle it is one of two ways. The first suggestion is to do nothing as it's truly not your responsibility to get involved with someone else's mail. The second suggestion would be to periodically take all of his mail, rubber band it and leave it by his front door if you feel that is a safe and secure place to leave it. I don't now how your residences are situated. Thank you for this interesting question.
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Dee, it has been so many years since I was hired so I can't say for sure what the drug testing policy is. I can, however, give you my experience. As far as I've ever heard or seen, you are drug tested once and that is pre-hiring. I have never heard of a random drug test being administered to letter carriers during their career. I'll just state the obvious and say keep clean and you'll have nothing to be concerned about. Good luck to you in your job/career with USPS.
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Cathy, in my opinion that is a tricky situation. I think it technically can be up to the carrier to decide whether or not they feel safe delivering mail to the house with the dog or not. On the flip side, I encounter that situation a couple of times per day and don't think twice about delivering to houses where I know the storm door is latched and strong enough to contain the dog. This is coming from a carrier (me) who isn't too comfortable with dogs overall and have never owned one. It is a very rare situation (almost zero) that I've refused to deliver mail to a house with a dog inside the front door. If the door looks a bit ajar I might put my foot by the front door while delivering the mail. I'm not sure any of this helps. I think the basic mantra is if we don't feel comfortable delivering to a house we don't have to. It seems a bit too gray though because someone could take that to an extreme. I feel it's always easier to deliver the mail then to have to bring it back and then attempt 2x the amount on the next delivery day.
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I'd say that it is untrue that it's a law that one must pick up their mail daily. If it is a law I've never heard of it and it wouldn't make any sense to me. I believe the carrier is just being not nice and telling you an untruth. The issue a letter carrier may have if someone doesn't pick up their mail daily is that depending on the size of the mailbox it may get too difficult to fit in subsequent mail deliveries. If this were the case it's possible that mail could be returned to the sender. Most mailboxes that I see can handle quite a few days worth of mail and it is common for people to not pick up their mail daily. If you are concerned about your mail being returned, please contact a delivery supervisor or postmaster to get clarification on the matter. Again, I don't see any issue or problem with mail not being collected daily by the recipient unless the mailbox capacity is pretty small.
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I think many letter carriers would just leave it because they may notice right away that there is no address on it or stamp. I can't speak for all letter carriers because there are many of us who don't pay attention and just take what's in the mailbox as outgoing mail. I don't think this good for them to do but some of my co-workers are clueless or are possibly paying attention to their smart phone vs. paying attention to the task at hand. To be honest, the mailbox should only be used for US Mail. My advice would be to not leave this letter in someone's mailbox to guard against the above scenario happening. To sum up my answer in one word: maybe.
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Generally, if we had a postal route where we drive a USPS vehicle (as opposed to urban routes where carriers may just walk out from the local post office and pick up mail from relay boxes along the way), we should have no problem handling multiple packages in one day even if they are different sizes. It's common for a recipient to get large and small items in the same day. I generally put them all together and leave them on the ground near the front door or mailbox. I would treat this situation just like I would getting lots of packages domestically. The items may have a tracking bar code that I'd scan as delivered once I delivered the items. I hope your experience is just as I've described.
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