Clear the damn box...

[sms001]

a normal North American vehicle (not right hand drive). So I guess he must just lean over at every box and load it up somehow.

I see the carrier on a local two lane everyday. State highway, VERY narrow SOFT shoulder. She sits a little to the left of the PASSENGER SIDE. Works the pedals with her left foot and steers with her left arm.

[wolfie]

That setup in Ireland is a model of efficiency when dealing with "one payer, different pockets", but turns into a nightmare if different services are split off to different payers. It would be very expensive to have public health staff go around regularly checking on isolated farmers, but a minimal expense to give some additional training to other people (posties) who already visit on a regular basis. So long as the post office and public health are both divisions of the same level of government, it doesn't matter that one division (post office) is paying for something that should be from another silo (public health). If the post office were to be privatized, I'm sure the checkups would stop - so public health would be forced to foot a large expense in order to maintain the service, and government would be "but why is this important all of a sudden?". Example below:

In Toronto, many of the older schools had facilities that were meant to also be used for non-school community purposes. When school funding was at the city level (i.e. education tax paid in city X went ONLY to schools in city X), it avoided expensive duplication of facilities. The cost of the "public use" facilities was paid out of your education taxes rather than your property taxes, but since both went to the civic level of government, it wasn't a problem.

A while back, the provincial government had a bright idea to fund all schools equally on a per-pupil basis provincewide, so that education taxes went to the province. This was great for schools in sparsely-populated areas, since these districts got more funding than under the old system, but in Toronto the "dual use" schools got hit hard. The new funding formula didn't take into account that the schools budget had been paying for something that belonged under parks and recreation, so they were stuck with the expense of maintaining a non-school facility without the funding needed to do so. A "minimize total costs" decision when 2 "silos" were funded by the same payer (municipal level) came back to bite them in the butt when the "silo" that had the expense was transferred to a different payer who wasn't willing to keep up the "cross-silo" cost.

As for the rural posties using standard (left-drive) North American vehicles, in a rural area the population covered by a given post office is probably small enough to have delivery be a part-time job. Any suggestion of hiring the operator of the local driving school (who probably doesn't have enough work for it to be a full-time occupation either) to do the delivery? After all, driving schools frequently have their cars modified to be dual-drive, so an instructor can take over from the student in an emergency. Take advantage of the second set of controls - while delivering the mail, they can drive from the right side, avoiding the need for dangerous contortions.

[raudf]

I see the carrier on a local two lane everyday. State highway, VERY narrow SOFT shoulder. She sits a little to the left of the PASSENGER SIDE. Works the pedals with her left foot and steers with her left arm.

I suspect our local carrier does the same thing, since I don't think her vehicle has been modified at all. Sometimes, she'll get lucky and have a trainee to do the mailboxes as she drives.. but that's not too often. Still, she drives better than most of the drunks in the area, so I shan't complain.

[BeeMused]

In most German cities carriers use bikes and have keys to the houses, so they can put the letters into the boxes. They really hate registered letters, esp when the recipient lives in 4th floor and no lift.
I live at 2nd floor, but I tip my postwoman, she's always friendly and very reliable. The postman at work gets a winter and summer present too and we let him use our breakroom to warm up or cool down. They do hard work and the pay isn't really great. No idea if tipping them is legal, but they deserve it.

[Gilhelmi]

Heh, I've heard the longest US mail route is 187 miles. That's a little bit long to walk.

There's a reason the joke goes, "An American thinks 100 years is a long time. An Englishman thinks 100 miles is a long way." We've got a lot of empty space to get across, outside the cities.

hhehehe, a hundred miles. I drive that two or three times a month to play table-top games. Of course 60 miles only takes less then 60 min for me.

When I was in the Army Reserve, I drove 300 miles to drill every month, then 300 miles back home. Also, about once a year I had to drive someplace rather random, one year it was 2000 miles round trip (at .52cent per mile it was a nice bonus).

[bhskittykatt]

hhehehe, a hundred miles. I drive that two or three times a month to play table-top games. Of course 60 miles only takes less then 60 min for me.

Between my paper route and my work commute, I drive around 75 miles a day. Spend over $300 a month on gas, too.

[Racket_Man]

Between my paper route and my work commute, I drive around 75 miles a day. Spend over $300 a month on gas, too.

Try being a pizza delivery driver. during the last 6 months or so I drove almost a `100 miles during every 8 - 10 hour shift.

[Gilhelmi]

Between my paper route and my work commute, I drive around 75 miles a day. Spend over $300 a month on gas, too.

I did about the same when I was commuting 60 miles round trip. Lucky for me, my car gets 30 miles to the gallon, so I only had to average $150 a month (not counting Drills)

I am so glad that is over now. I took a $1/hr pay cut (but no commute), and was making more money because of the gas.

[raudf]

Hubs drives around 100 miles a day just to go to work. May be closer to 120, though. He's looking for job closer to home, but the area is a bit scarce on jobs.

[CrappyToHelp]

Hubs drives around 100 miles a day just to go to work. May be closer to 120, though. He's looking for job closer to home, but the area is a bit scarce on jobs.

MOD EDIT ~ Image resized out of courtesy to others. Click on image to enlarge.

120 miles a day? That's more than from my city to London!



Insane.

[Gizmo]

Don't forget thats both ways from Raudfs comment so more Andover to London in one trip.... I know quite a few in the UK who do more than that to be honest.

[raudf]

I shoulda been more specific.. but it was early morning and I was waiting for them to say that school was cancelled due to ice. That's the round trip. Roughly 60 miles there and 60 miles back. All but 8 miles are freeway. It's not the drive that's the problem though. It's the other idiots on the road, causing what should be an hour drive to become two hours due to people forgetting the rule of "shiny side up."