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 am not sure what a city flyer is, but I am guessing it was some type of communication from your city or it was an advertisement. If it said "postal customer" on it, it likely was delivered by the USPS. Another way is to check if there is an indicia on it. That is a square usually in the upper right hand corner of the mailpiece that says "prst std, US mail, paid" or something like that. That is proof of postage. We often deliver mailings that say "postal customer". Basically it means that each address receives this piece of mail. Sometimes it is residential only and sometimes it goes to all business and residential customers.
It doesn't sound reasonable to me to even have a 14-mile walking route to begin with. That is walking more than a half-marathon daily. If you had zero mail to deliver and walked 14 miles you may be able to cover the route in 4 hours if walk at 3.5 MPH. That is faster than most people walk or at least about the average walking speed. Please tell your boyfriend to do the best he can, walk safely, and that the rate he is being asked to walk at is unrealistic. I just did a quick internet search for "average walking speed" and it is 3.1 MPH. This doesn't include delivering mail or any weight added if your boyfriend is carrying a satchel of mail. USPS management is known for being unreasonable at times.
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.
As a general rule, I think a letter carrier should be delivering mail to a mailbox unless they know or trust the person asking for the mail. If you are asking if they can bypass a house and not deliver mail at all, the main reason for refusing to deliver mail would be that the carrier feels their personal safety is in jeopardy due to a dog or other unsafe condition. They can also refuse to deliver the mail if safe access or access in general (door to an apt. Building is locked for an example) to the mailbox can't be assured. I don't know if the situation occurred to you which brought up this question. It is rare that I ever don't deliver mail to an address. Even if it's an unsafe construction area, I may give the mail to one of the workers who will put the mail in the mailbox.
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It's odd for someone to say "it's on the truck" when the tracking seems very non-specific and sounds like it hasn't been updated. 8 days is too long for a certified letter to reach you unless the item was missorted en route and was either misdelivered or is sitting at a PO and nothing is being done with it. I don't know what to tell you to do except to wait a few more days. After that, you could contact the sender and say you never received the letter though they would have the same information as the online tracking.
I actually have no idea regarding the blue collection boxes being replaced with ones that have thinner slots. Possibly it is harder to steal out of it with a thinner slot buy I'm purely speculating. I don't know that theft from these boxes is much of an issue in most areas. Your question is the first I'm hearing about different size slot collection boxes. If anything I just hear of there being less collection boxes in general due to the decline in First-Class Mail being sent.
This definitely happens all the time. I would hope that we try to deliver every package but if we haven't organized our deliveries well enough, we may forget to deliveran online purchase. The parcel would then be brought back to the Post Office and probably be delivered the next delivery day.
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