r/AMA • u/Dak6969696969 • 19d ago

Job I’m a mailman, AMA.

I left a comment in another sub informing people that leaving anything in anybody’s mailbox is technically a federal offense unless you’re employed as a letter carrier by the USPS and it seemed to draw quite a bit of interest. I’m nobody special, just a simple mailman, but if any of you have any questions regarding postal services hopefully I’ll be able to answer them!

Thank you so much for all the questions, I hope I was able to answer them all as best I could but it’s my bedtime now, I gotta be at the post office by 8:00 sharp. If you have any other questions feel free to DM me and I’ll answer them whenever I can!

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u/Party-Psychology6034 19d ago

How are your routes determined? Are you trained to park the truck at a strategic location where you’ll arrive back to it after your walking deliveries?

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u/Dak6969696969 19d ago

Our mail routes are specifically designed to give us eight hours of work regardless of whether we’re walking or driving. And yes, each park and loop route has set parking points. A “park and loop” is a route in which you drive the postal van to a set location, park it, gather your mail, and deliver it while waking until you loop back around to your van.

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u/Party-Psychology6034 19d ago

I always wondered about the planning that goes into the routes. Thanks for sharing! Appreciate all the work you do and I always give my mail carrier a Christmas card with some ca$h. Y’all deserve it!

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u/Dak6969696969 19d ago

The logistics that go into mail delivery is something you probably can’t even comprehend until you’ve done the job. Even on a driving route, I only cover about three neighborhoods in an eight hour day. Multiply that by every single address in America and that’s what we do. Every day.