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 see on a map you are referring to towns in MN that are about 55 miles apart. That's the mileage from Chaska, MN to Zimmerman, MN. I'd say it's approximately 2 days to get from the origin to the destination. For example, if the letter was mailed on a Tuesday before the collection deadline it should be delivered by Thursday. I hope this answers your question. It's also not a good idea to send actual cash through the mail if you can avoid it.
I am going to have to pass on answering this question with any authority because I don't know the union contract when it comes to this subject. It's also possible that a local agreement governs what is done. It makes sense to me that an unassigned regular can hold down a vacant route until it is put up for bid. They also shouldn't be bumped off that route unless it's the non-scheduled day for that route. In that situation the comp person would usually do the route on the day they are supposed to. If there is no available routes to do on a comp persons group of 5 routes there is usually another route for them to cover. The above is just based on what I've seen done at the PO where I work. I can't even say that my info is accurate. We usually treat hold downs to mean that the carrier holding it down has many of the rights as the regular carrier on the route, but not necessarily all. This is where it gets confusing to me about bumping rights.
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.
I'd recommend that if you received the mail for someone who previously lived at your residence but didn't put in a forward for you to put the mail back in your mailbox and you can write on it "moved" or "doesn't live here anymore". The letter carrier should take it and not redeliver it to you. You also have the option to discard since nobody would really know but I feel that is the wrong thing to do. By putting the mail back in the mailbox you alert the letter carrier that the person has moved from that address.
Court Reporter
Sommelier
CBP Officer
If I were in motion, I'd safely pull over, put on my four-way flashers, and then get out to investigate. It's possible that my gas cap is hanging out the side of the LLV, the back gate isn't secure, or maybe I'm dragging something. It could also be something that I haven't thought of. If the motorist is still around I'd ask them what they are pointing out. If it seemed to be some type of phony diversion tactic, I'd try to get far away from the motorist pointing and then investigate safely.
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.
They really shouldn't be taking your mail into their unit or house or apt if you don't shared the same living space with them and they aren't responsible about giving it to you. It may not be easy but you could politely ask the landlord and girlfriend and son to maybe leave your mail in the box or slip it under your door if that's accessible or appropriate. I agree it's not good for you to need to be concerned if someone is taking your mail and giving it to you at their convenience. I know it's not the answer you'd like to hear, but a PO Box rental would solve this issue. The drawback is that it costs money and is probably less convenient than getting mail at your residence. The USPS would probably not get involved in separating out your mail and putting in to a different mail receptacle unless the unit was officially designated an apt for mail receiving purposes. I don't know how one would go about doing this or the complexity of it. We have a database of authorized addresses that we go by to deliver the mail and if there aren't multiple units designated in the same dwelling, all of the mail would normally be put together.
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