Canada post rant

[mimico_polak]

Walking routes do not have a company vehicle provided. You get taxi chits to go to the start of your route from the depot and to return at end of shift. You can have lunch wherever and whenever you wish.

Although as previously mentioned, most of us seem to skip it. Even in an 8hr+ day.

I'm having a hard time with the statement in bold...all over our area there are mail trucks while the carriers go out and walk their routes.

Grab mail, walk route, empty bag, return to truck for more. Rinse and repeat.

And we're definitely not rural. I think during my lunch time walks of 4km...I see a minimum of 3-4 mail trucks along the walk.

 

[oioioi]

I'm having a hard time with the statement in bold...all over our area there are mail trucks while the carriers go out and walk their routes.

Grab mail, walk route, empty bag, return to truck for more. Rinse and repeat.

And we're definitely not rural. I think during my lunch time walks of 4km...I see a minimum of 3-4 mail trucks along the walk.

I think that applies to downtown routes.
But even then, I have seen several CP vans around.

So is there a line up of taxis at the depots each morning?

 

[GreyGhost]

I'm having a hard time with the statement in bold...all over our area there are mail trucks while the carriers go out and walk their routes.

Grab mail, walk route, empty bag, return to truck for more. Rinse and repeat.

And we're definitely not rural. I think during my lunch time walks of 4km...I see a minimum of 3-4 mail trucks along the walk.

I thought the trucks used to dump mailbag into the large lock boxes and carriers restocked from the boxes? Maybe your neighbourhood doesn't have the boxes so they use the truck as a base station?

 

[mimico_polak]

I thought the trucks used to dump mailbag into the large lock boxes and carriers restocked from the boxes? Maybe your neighbourhood doesn't have the boxes so they use the truck as a base station?

We don’t have the boxes. They use the trucks as base stations.

 

[JZ67]

MCs?

Sounds like his wife uses her own vehicle for deliveries, so her pay is structured differently iirc.

Yup, she is an RSMC and delivers a suburban route with community mail boxes.

RSMC's need to supply their own vehicle and get paid for the total number of kilometres on the daily line of travel. It works out that it actually costs more to provide a good working vehicle than what is paid for but that's the deal. On paper it sounds fair, in reality the balance is in favour of CP.

The trick is to buy a POS and run it into the ground, which some of the other RSMC's do.

The big picture is that she is pretty well compensated for her time. You can't get rich and in this economy would struggle on one income but it's way better than many other jobs. There is freedom that is not afforded elsewhere and a reasonably decent pension waiting.

Sent from my SM-S916W using Tapatalk

 

[bitzz]

Different post offices handle the load differently. The "community" mail boxes really changed things
AFIK if you live somewhere established area that gets door to door, you get to the door delivery, if you have a NEW address, you get a community box. The post office is REALLY pushing the community boxes, they're a LOT easier.
Where I am now it's all rural routes... delivered by car/truck. There are 5-6 routes out of the local post office and they have 3 trucks... one of which is in the shop (they just got 2 new Dodge trucks). Carriers sort, then go do their route.
One morning my truck wouldn't start, so I did the route in my '84 Olds. NEVER AGAIN, nothing wrong with the car, but everybody wanted to talk about the car, I only got half the route done.
When I worked in Cooksville (old area, hardly any community boxes): carriers would do their sort, jump in a cab, drop half their load in a green box (so they didn't have to carry it all day) that was mid way in their route, then go start their route (the boxes aren't green anymore, they're that anti-graffiti motif, but we still called them green boxes)
Then there was the Matheson carrier "super" station. they centralized a bunch of carrier stations into one BIG station and they had a bus that would cart carriers around, but they stashed their load at a community box midway on the route, and circle around to it.... but their walk is much smaller because it's mostly delivering to community boxes.
At Matheson, which handled a lot of "business" mail, some of those businesses had a private contractor pick up and deliver their mail from the sort station.
Even within each post offices there can be major differences in routes. A friend worked up near Weston/Lawerence and there was one walk where EVERY address was a house with a mail box, every house had a porch with 4 or 5 steps. NO BODY wanted that walk, so my friend took it when she was in her 50's. She's retired now, and she's the healthiest 71 year old I know. (Dina was a fun lady. She used to show up at Mosport, with her 125 Honda racer STUFFED into the back seat of their Honda Civic,we'd put the bike together and then she'd go out and just KILL IT, well into her 60s)
So how they DO things is dependent on the topography/density of the delivery area. No singular "game plan"... just get the mail delivered, as cheaply and efficiently as you can.
One thing I found REALLY strange: up here on rural routes, the carrier is allowed to have a "helper", that gets the same pay rate, no mileage.
And up here, with rural routes: Amazon is killing the carriers. Sometimes half the load is Amazon packages, which is a different pay rate than Canada Post packages.
In MY experience, on rural routes (our routes were fairly high mileage) half your paycheck was mileage and yeah, it's not enough. My plan was to buy a KEI truck, but couldn't make the numbers work... so I don't do it anymore... it didn't help that my car/truck insurance company found out and threatened to cancel my insurance, till they found the insurance code in Ontario says delivering mail part time ISN'T commercial activity... full time YES, part time NO... and my insurance company wouldn't insure a KEI.
Canada Post sort boxes make real good storage for motorcycle parts. They have LIDS.

 

[GreyGhost]

On a related note, CP fell on their face and didn't fix the problem until media got involved.

Help! My mail is being held hostage

A North York woman is speaking out after outgoing mail she’d been inserting into a Canada Post mailbox went uncollected for months.

toronto.citynews.ca

 

[Evoex]

I'm having a hard time with the statement in bold...all over our area there are mail trucks while the carriers go out and walk their routes.

Grab mail, walk route, empty bag, return to truck for more. Rinse and repeat.

And we're definitely not rural. I think during my lunch time walks of 4km...I see a minimum of 3-4 mail trucks along the walk.

So, I finished my route today in 4.5hrs. Good game.

My route was a support route. So I had to drop off the mail in relay boxes and deliver parcels for someone with a walking route. As I said before, walking routes do not get a vehicle. So anyone you've seen with a truck has a 'normal' route. We can park them and walk for blocks depending on how the route is setup. They provide a guide line on how and when you should deliver but you have the freedom to make changes to the order of things as long as the work gets done.

 

[BigEvilDoer]

Question to the posties.

Is there a specific time that you need to finish your route by?

My depot starts at 9am, with 2 routes starting at 8:30am. You are expected to be done, back at the depot, junk mail collated for the next day and out the door by 5pm. That rarely happens. We have foot walks that have 600+ houses, and house/residential routes with almost 1000 points of call. 600 houses may not seem like a lot, but try walking that many - sidewalk, up the driveway to the mailbox, back down the driveway to the sidewalk and go to the next. I average 22,000-27,000 steps a day depending on the route I’m doing.

 

[BigEvilDoer]

I'm of the assumption they were lazy and dropping off the card is faster than actually getting out of the vehicle to deliver the item to someone. The local post office is a 15min drive away so it's a bit of an inconvenience.

Yes. They were being lazy.
Signature items are a freaking bane of existence for foot routes. I regularly have 10-15 a day. if someone’s not home, we stick the card to your door and have to carry it with us for the rest of the day…. In general, I have a 20% delivery rate (on the absolute best days) of signature items as people are at work.

The only option we have is to leave multiple “not at home (carded items)” in a relay box, and go back there with the taxi on the way back to the depot so it can be taken to the customer pickup facility. Carrying all these items on top of regular and junk mail invariably ends in damage to the packaging etc.

 

[BigEvilDoer]

I'm having a hard time with the statement in bold...all over our area there are mail trucks while the carriers go out and walk their routes.

Grab mail, walk route, empty bag, return to truck for more. Rinse and repeat.

And we're definitely not rural. I think during my lunch time walks of 4km...I see a minimum of 3-4 mail trucks along the walk.

So, you’re in an area that’s set up as “Park and Loop.” Posties drive to a location, get out of the van, do a loops which brings them back to the van. Repeat 1-2 more times. Go deliver parcels using van. Move to next location in the van.

Most depots don’t have the parking space available for that many vans. So, they used CUS (Combined Urban Service) drivers. They deliver the relay bags to the boxes for the posties. They also deliver the parcels that foot posties cannot carry (size (200 cubic inches max) / weight (3 pounds max per parcel/packet).

And now you know. ;-)

 

[FullMotoJacket]

sidewalk, up the driveway to the mailbox, back down the driveway to the sidewalk and go to the next.

I need you to have a talk with my mail guy. The only time he's ever on the street is when he crosses it to do the other side.

 

[Evoex]

My depot starts at 9am, with 2 routes starting at 8:30am. You are expected to be done, back at the depot, junk mail collated for the next day and out the door by 5pm. That rarely happens. We have foot walks that have 600+ houses, and house/residential routes with almost 1000 points of call. 600 houses may not seem like a lot, but try walking that many - sidewalk, up the driveway to the mailbox, back down the driveway to the sidewalk and go to the next. I average 22,000-27,000 steps a day depending on the route I’m doing.

Everyone always forgets the stairs and the weight of the mail, when they crow that 20k steps is nothing. lol

 

[oioioi]

I need you to have a talk with my mail guy. The only time he's ever on the street is when he crosses it to do the other side

He missed the training session where they talked about "no walking on front lawns"

 

[BigEvilDoer]

I need you to have a talk with my mail guy. The only time he's ever on the street is when he crosses it to do the other side.

Well, we’re not supposed to do that ever. It’s hard not to in the summer time, as it makes it much easier and faster… but in the winter, well, we pretty much have to do the whole process the way it’s supposed to be done.

Or, simply let the carrier know that you don’t want them on the lawn. If they do it again, you can report them. A card will be put into your address’ mail slot in the sorting case advising everyone else to stay off the lawn.,

 

[BigEvilDoer]

Everyone always forgets the stairs and the weight of the mail, when they crow that 20k steps is nothing. lol

170 stories a day on my old route (CN Tower main deck is 145 stories).
When they restructure routes, I firmly believe they need to update all the stair counts (my old route was off (on the low side) by an average of 35-40% on average) and overlay the routes on a topographical map.

Once complete, they need to walk the entire route with the postie. Each section (routes are divided into 3 pieces) needs to be noted for equal balance etc. That’s the only way that any “holy crap this is wrong” will ever happen,

 

[bitzz]

Doing RR you get a book, like a duotang, with every address on the route, notes... and a route DRIVING PLAN.
So I thought I know my way around, and more than once when I read the Plan and WTF??? Are these people LOST?? You do the sort, and in the sort you're jumping around in addresses HUH? Makes NO sense. NONE
After you do the route, and had to double back to deliver THAT one stupid address that you missed... a couple of times, it all starts to make sense... it's like someone has done this before....
Ya see... out here in the country, the old farm house half way up the concession, gets mail box delivery cuz it's always been there. The other 30 addresses AROUND that house, that were built after community boxes don't, they get mail to a community box... three different community mail boxes...confuses my little brain... READ THE BOOK
At the local post office while I was doing sort and got mis addressed mail, somebody would know the family name and correct address.

 

[Hardwrkr13]

Yes. They were being lazy.
Signature items are a freaking bane of existence for foot routes. I regularly have 10-15 a day. if someone’s not home, we stick the card to your door and have to carry it with us for the rest of the day…. In general, I have a 20% delivery rate (on the absolute best days) of signature items as people are at work.

The only option we have is to leave multiple “not at home (carded items)” in a relay box, and go back there with the taxi on the way back to the depot so it can be taken to the customer pickup facility. Carrying all these items on top of regular and junk mail invariably ends in damage to the packaging etc.

Mines not a foot route but yes I understand. Much easier to drive the truck around tossing cards in mailboxes instead of driving up the driveway and knocking. Was just curious if there was a valid reason like something stated when shipped that would make it postal office-only for pickup. I’ll see if I can send an angry email complaint.

 

[Scuba Steve]

Mines not a foot route but yes I understand. Much easier to drive the truck around tossing cards in mailboxes instead of driving up the driveway and knocking. Was just curious if there was a valid reason like something stated when shipped that would make it postal office-only for pickup. I’ll see if I can send an angry email complaint.

You can complain they will agree with you that it is against the standards of service but no they won't do anything about it as they don't care. If it is from Amazon just don't pick it up and tell them it was never delivered. They will ship another with a reliable delivery method.

Sent from the future

 

[sburns]

Or, simply let the carrier know that you don’t want them on the lawn. If they do it again, you can report them. A card will be put into your address’ mail slot in the sorting case advising everyone else to stay off the lawn.,

Yeah that doesn't always work, and you know CP doesn't always follow through on a lot of things.
I've told my carrier several times not to cross my lawn, mostly because they have crushed my downspout in the winter because it's covered. But there have been several new carriers in my area so the message isn't being relayed.

My next step will be sending them a video of them doing it, or putting up a lawn sign like @oioioi posted.