Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff from how stuff works, Hey, brain Stuff,
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam Here. Neither snow nor rain, nor heat nor
Speaker 1: gloom of night keeps your loyal mailman from making their
Speaker 1: daily rounds in their powder blue shirt, gray shorts, and
Speaker 1: occasionally awesome safari hat. But how exactly did your trustee
Speaker 1: mail carrier get assigned the specific route? And how long
Speaker 1: are they stuck with it? The US Postal Service was
Speaker 1: established by the Constitution, and the first Postmaster General was
Speaker 1: named by George Washington. In nine The new country was
Speaker 1: served by seventy five post offices, delivering to four million people.
Speaker 1: According to Sue Brennan at the United States Postal Service,
Speaker 1: your mail carrier's current route is one of more than
Speaker 1: seventy four thousand rural postal routes and nearly a hundred
Speaker 1: and forty five thousand city routes across the nation. The
Speaker 1: longest single route in America is in Magnum, Oklahoma, where
Speaker 1: a well traveled world carrier drives a hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: three miles that's two kios every day to serve two
Speaker 1: undering forty eight customers. The shortest route is in Athens, Georgia,
Speaker 1: where a city carrier walks nine d and fifty feet
Speaker 1: that's two hundred nine ms to make two hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty one deliveries. We spoke with Brian Renfrow. He's a
Speaker 1: second generation letter carrier from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, currently serving as
Speaker 1: the executive vice president of the National Association of Letter Carriers,
Speaker 1: a labor union representing America's two hundred thousand city postal workers.
Speaker 1: Renfrow explained to us the process by which an individual
Speaker 1: postal route is designed and assigned for starters. Renfrow says
Speaker 1: rural carriers and city carriers have different systems for determining
Speaker 1: the size of a route. A rural carrier's route is
Speaker 1: much more consistent, and they are paid for the amount
Speaker 1: of time it takes them to complete the route. For
Speaker 1: city carriers, the guiding principle of route design is for
Speaker 1: a carrier to complete the route in as close to
Speaker 1: eight hours as possible. As you can imagine, an eight
Speaker 1: hour route looks a lot different depending on your location.
Speaker 1: In a dense urban center full of high rise apartments,
Speaker 1: it might take a postal worker eight hours to serve
Speaker 1: us a couple of blocks out in the suburbs. Another
Speaker 1: postal worker might walk and drive miles delivering two single
Speaker 1: family homes. The size and dimensions of each route are
Speaker 1: calculated using a combination of computer based mapping software and
Speaker 1: old fashioned on the ground experience. Renfrew said. The postal
Speaker 1: service has a computer program that maps the exact location
Speaker 1: of every delivery point, not just this house is here,
Speaker 1: but where the mailbox is. And this program uses a
Speaker 1: number of algorithms to try to generate the most efficient
Speaker 1: way to travel the route based on the time value
Speaker 1: that's assigned to each street. The computer's timing of the
Speaker 1: route is just a starting point, though after that it's
Speaker 1: the postal manager's job to account for reality, which includes
Speaker 1: all the variables that can impact the time it takes
Speaker 1: to complete a route. There are seasonal fluctuations in mail volume.
Speaker 1: There's inclement weather, there's road construction and new home construction,
Speaker 1: and the very human differences between one carrier and the next,
Speaker 1: Renfrew said. Some letter carriers are tall, some are short,
Speaker 1: some are young, some are older, some are faster, some
Speaker 1: are slower. There are all sorts of variables that play
Speaker 1: into it. There's no set time to deliver mail at
Speaker 1: a particular house, the postal carrier has to spend a
Speaker 1: few hours sorting the mail into trays before heading out
Speaker 1: on their route. The trays correspond to the order of
Speaker 1: the route. If the house is ahead of you on
Speaker 1: the route happened to be heavier on mail than usual
Speaker 1: on any given day, the letters may get to your
Speaker 1: box later than on another day, even if the weather
Speaker 1: is good and there's no road construction or other delays.
Speaker 1: Keeping the roots as close to eight hours as possible
Speaker 1: requires regular adjustments. Postal managers will conduct six day root
Speaker 1: inspections to accurately time each part of the letter carrier's day,
Speaker 1: from the daily morning sorting to the on the street
Speaker 1: delivery to hanging up their bag at night. If a
Speaker 1: carrier's day is stretching closer to eight and a half hours,
Speaker 1: the postal manager will slice off a portion of that
Speaker 1: route and divvy it up among nearby carriers with lighter loads.
Speaker 1: That explains why you might see a new face on
Speaker 1: your route every couple of years. Otherwise, the assigning of
Speaker 1: roots at any given post office is done by seniority.
Speaker 1: When a route is vacated, the carrier quits or retires,
Speaker 1: or a new one is created, all the carriers in
Speaker 1: the office get too bid on the route, the carrier
Speaker 1: with the most seniority wins. If you've had the same
Speaker 1: letter carrier for a long time, that probably means you're
Speaker 1: part of a desirable route, or those cookies you gave
Speaker 1: them on National Postal Worker Day July one are really
Speaker 1: paying off. In addition to the long term root adjustments
Speaker 1: that are made every few months or years, the Postal
Speaker 1: Service also makes short term root fixes. When letter carriers
Speaker 1: show up to work every morning, they look at the
Speaker 1: day's mail volume and make an estimate of how long
Speaker 1: it will take to complete their assigned route. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: a snow day or a day after a government holiday,
Speaker 1: so the delivery volume is doubled. If they know it's
Speaker 1: going to take more than eight hours, they can either
Speaker 1: volunteer for overtime. Overtime sign ups are every three months,
Speaker 1: or the supervisor can assign a portion of the route
Speaker 1: to other carriers for the day. Renfrew notes that though
Speaker 1: this may sound simple in practice, it can get complicated fast.
Speaker 1: Individual post offices in big cities like New York, Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: or Boston might have to hundred to three hundred letter
Speaker 1: carriers to manage, each with hundreds of ever changing customers
Speaker 1: to deliver to. Today's episode was written by Dave Ruse
Speaker 1: and produced by Tyler Clay. Brain Stuff is a production
Speaker 1: of iHeartMedia's How Stuff Works. For more on this and
Speaker 1: lots of other topics that deliver, visit our home planet,
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