Interior temperatures of over 120F. Mail carriers discussing cooking meals on floorboards. Some postal workers literally dying from heat. To be an American postal delivery worker in a Grumman LLV in a hot part of the United States is to sweat. And sweat. And drink water. And struggle to get one tiny fan to keep you from having to take so many breaks that you can’t get your job done. Let’s talk about the Grumman LLV and its lack of air conditioning, which is absolutely ridiculous in 2024.
Recently, I found myself sitting at a stoplight next to America’s mail-delivery workhorse, the Grumman LLV (see below). I looked inside and spotted a fan — not a fan integrated nicely into a dashboard, but a fan you might expect to see in a toll booth or dormitory. An afterthought.
A few days later, I saw a mail carrier delivering packages in Santa Monica (see photos after the one directly below), and I asked her about the climate control system in the vehicle: No, they do not have AC, she told me. There really is just a fan.
A Woefully Inadequate Fan
Seriously, this fan is all that drivers of Grumman LLVs get other than whatever airflow comes through the latched-open doors:
And apparently the fan is woefully inadequate, with Redditers on the r/USPS page who apparently drive these machines daily writing:
I mean I knew the fans in the LLVs just blew hot air around but didn’t think it was even HOTTER than the air already inside the LLVs. ????
And:
[The comfort fans] just turn that oven on wheels into an air fryer on wheels.
Here’s another:
So dash fan it is which it’s mostly for looks as it doesn’t do anything but blow hot air.
Not only is the fan apparently inadequate, but it’s also loud:
I wish the fan wasn’t so loud.
Someone replied to that with:
It’s such a high pitched squeel.
Here’s another post about the fan’s noise:
That noisy ass front fan blows nothing but hot air and dirt in my face!
The Heat Can Be Deadly
As someone who works in the San Fernando Valley, where things become stiflingly hot in the summer, I know that a fan isn’t going to cut it in traffic. In fact, back in 2018, a USPS driver named Peggy Frank died while delivering mail on an especially hot day in the valley. From the LA Times:
The United States Postal Service is facing nearly $150,000 in fines after the heat-related death of a Woodland Hills mail carrier last summer.
Peggy Frank, 63, was found dead in her non-air-conditioned mail truck on July 6, the same day temperatures in the Los Angeles neighborhood hit a high of 115 degrees.
The Los Angeles County coroner’s office listed Frank’s primary cause of death as hyperthermia, an abnormally high body temperature resulting from exposure to extreme heat.
The article goes into what the USPS should do to keep its workers safe on hot days, writing:
During heat waves, employers should allow workers to take more frequent breaks than usual, monitor workers for signs of illness and provide employees with water, rest and shade, according to Department of Labor guidelines.
Here’s more on the incident from OSHA:
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has cited the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) for a repeated violation of OSHA’s General Duty Clause following the heat-related death of a Southern California mail carrier at the Woodland Hills Post Office.
The employee suffered hyperthermia while delivering mail in July 2018 when the outdoor temperature reached 117 degrees. The general duty violation addresses USPS’s programs and procedures for employees working in high-heat situations. The postal service was also cited for a repeated violation of recordkeeping requirements related to recording heat stress incidents. Proposed penalties total $149,664.
“The U.S. Postal Service knows the dangers of working in high-heat conditions and is required to address employee safety in these circumstances,” said OSHA Oakland Area Office Director Amber Rose. “USPS is responsible for establishing work practices to protect mail carriers who work outdoors from the hazards of extreme temperatures.”
An alleged mail delivery driver on the online forum “Rural Mail Talk” discussed how their local office was handling the news of the tragic 2018 death:
We had a stand up about this carriers death the day after it happened…But we were told how we should slow down and cool off, drink plenty of fluids when we become over heated…So, I ask you. Does management care?
Here’s a reply to that “Does management care” question:
— Sure, but just enough to cover their assets in case there was a heat-related incident. Then they could point to a stand-up given, posters in the office, or info passed along via the scanner.
— Just be sure not to spend more than 10 minutes parked in the shade to deal with the heat or risk a third-degree of questioning why you were in one place for so long.
— Should manglement complain about too many to the drinking fountain to get hydrated before heading out to the route — just ask manglement if they would rather you be away from the case for a few minutes during the morning or have you laid up in the hospital, possibly for several days due to a heat-related incident — or worse.
Interior Temperature Measurements, Cooking Food On The Floor/Dash
By the way, the 2018 thread that the two previous posts on “Rural Mail Talk” are replying to is called “How hot is your LLV?” It contains measurements by self-identified mail delivery drivers of the temperature inside the cab. Here are some of those measurements:
The small camping thermometer I used to put on the dash board pegged out at 120 F degrees in the summer time. So no doubt is was actually hotter than that.
Here’s another one from someone claiming to be an Arizona-based mail carrier, who mentions actually cooking food on the floorboards (it’s not clear if this person is serious, but it seems so):
I took the Lazer temp and tested the floor of the llv. It was only 100 yesterday and I got readings up to 162. It’s supposed to be 116 tomorrow. I’m thinking malassas cookies or neopolitan pizza. This will be my summer of quests. If life gives you an oven – bake!!
Today, in my llv, I cooked vegetable gyoza with ginger/soy sauce for dipping. It was pretty good. I have some seniors I deliver to and they have started to give me suggestions. So, everyday this week I stop for a couple minutes for lunch and we rate the meals. One gentleman said he made grilled cheese all the time in Korea on the ambulances. Hhmmm, I do like me some cheese!
Here’s a similar discussion on a Reddit thread:
The best thing though is putting chocolate chip cookies on the dash in summer time. So good and melted by lunch they taste like they’re fresh from the oven lol
In a 2020 thread titled “Heat in LLV” — also on Rural Mail Talk forum — one person claims to have seen 150F measured on their dashboard:
The person included a bit more info besides that in the screengrab above:
Yup its crazy… I was just reminded of it from someone else’s pic of 120°.
And the MDD daily safety of something like,,,”all heat conditions are avoidable” or ” heat related illnesses are preventable”…or something to that effect, was just Thursday or Saturday this week.
The person who had apparently posted the 120F photo replied, writing:
Yes, but I place mind on the mail tray next to drivers seat. Not in the sun. I record the temperature my seat is experiencing as that is closest to my temperature experience.
I record, for family members, on my 4240 in case we have an incident of medical heat emergency. Most employees at the office have told their families to go after the USPS if they die from effects of delivery.
That comment above about noting temperatures as a way to hold USPS accountable should something happen is grim, but a Rural Mail Talk forum member named Morty wrote something similar in the aforementioned “How hot is your LLV?” thread. From Morty:
I’d keep a thermometer in my LLv and record the highest temp. Itd have to be digital and mounted on the dash. After 2 weeks, give your report to the PM along with a 1767 and a phone call to OSHA if your temps exceed safe temps. When you die, your family will have better stance to sue.
How Do We Fix This?
So what’s the solution? The obvious one is: Get new delivery vehicles that come with AC. The Grumman LLV, which has been in service since the mid-1980s, and was not originally designed with AC in mind. To retrofit it would be prohibitively expensive, especially for the USPS given its severe funding limitations. In fact, according to Online Safety Trainer (an organization that teaches workplace safety), the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission vacated multiple OSHA citations because of a lack of feasible technical solutions to the problem. From Online Safety Trainer:
In a recent series of decisions, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) weighed in on the ongoing debate regarding excessive heat hazards and the United States Postal Service (USPS). The OSHRC vacated four of five citations issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to USPS for excessive heat exposure to letter carriers in Benton, Arkansas; Houston and San Antonio, Texas; and Martinsburg, West Virginia. The commission concluded that OSHA failed to identify economically and technically feasible prevention measures USPS could have implemented.
However, in the fifth case, the panel determined that a Des Moines, Iowa, USPS station failed to provide heat safety training for City Carrier Assistants (CCAs) and remanded the case to a review commission administrative law judge (ALJ).
One Redditor breaks it down how the age of the LLVs is the reason behind the lack of air conditioning, and goes on to voice frustrations on just how egregious the situation is:
Every year some lawmaker introduces legislation named after a carrier who has died from heat stroke and says they’re going to work to getting the trucks retrofitted. Then it goes silent until next summer when the same thing happens again.
I’m pretty bitter about the political grandstanding they’ve done on workers’ deaths.
Anyways to answer your question for real, it’s because they weren’t built with it. Those trucks are missing a lot of features that would shock people: no air-conditioning, no airbags, no anti-lock braking, and more. It’s legal because the vehicles were built before those things became mandatory so they are grandfathered in.
As far as heat-related OSHA complaints go, it also should be allowable since carriers are supposed to have an unlimited number of “comfort stops” and breaks must not be limited to cool down and drink water.
However, OSHA has levied mounting penalties onto USPS for heat-related fatalities and injuries. USPS management frequently punishes carriers for going overtime even in instances where the delay is from need to take cooling breaks.
Investigations every year show examples of management telling carriers to “use approved breaks to cooldown.” The implicit instruction here is, of course, that cooling down outside your lunch break is “unapproved.” Even though that isn’t true, and they know it, even if a carrier knows it as well it can still lead to improper safety conduct. In the past, management has been caught saying explicitly “take as many cooldown breaks as you need, but also we will be issuing discipline for those who take more than 8 hours to finish their route.”
So yeah, it’s bonkers and it’s not going to be fixed soon. The new fleet won’t even begin to go into production unatil 2023. The first vehicles won’t be driven by carriers til 2025 at the earliest and they won’t finish building all of them until 2031. So probably more deaths to come until then…. which is a fucked up but real thing to say.
Again, grim.
To be sure, there are some LLVs that feature a rear fan (see above), which is apparently quite helpful. Here’s a comment about it from Reddit:
In Florida. These are our “air conditioners” as they draw air through the rear vent. Better than the dash fan but still not good enough once it reaches about 90.
Here’s a reply:
yeah, I’m in SW Florida and that side fan is good/decent when it works but mine decided to crap out today(on one of the hottest days of course ), so I had to rely on that god awful dash fan along with frequent stops in shaded areas cause I was overheating and feeling faint.
Here’s a response to that reply:
Ugh. Same. I have the only LLV without the side vent AC. So dash fan it is which it’s mostly for looks as it doesn’t do anything but blow hot air. I actually bought a Dewalt fan that I attach to my visor area. It works ok along with my seat cover fan. But yeah today my LLV got to 98 and it’s only March. I’m def not acclimated to the heat yet either. I had to stop and drink a body armor. Gonna be a long spring at this rate my friend
Another Redditor in another thread writes:
I have one in my llv..I love it..it’s quiet and blows just enough air on you to keep cool. That noisy ass front fan blows nothing but hot air and dirt in my face!
That’s supposed to go thru the bulkhead and blow in the cab area, not the cargo area. I had one in an LLV that got totaled, reg carrier asked me to take it out of the wrecked one before it was sent off. I (VOMA) had it installed in the LLV that replaced the wrecked one. Carrier couldn’t live without it! I can understand why. Blows 1000X better than that comfort fan. Those just turn that oven on wheels into an air fryer on wheels.
User hey-yall-watch-this responded:
The air from it feels better because it’s being pulled from outside rather than from the blazing hot air at the dash/windshield area that useless fan blows on you.
Again, that dash fan is a steaming pile of junk.
There’s also a device called a — and I’m not making this up — “cooldataz,” which is advertised to help LLV drivers stay cool. Similarly wild is a Rural Mail Talk user named Guin’s solution:
I put drain pipes on the doors of my llv. I use ties to attach them, as you drive, the wind gets directed into the llv. For routes that stop box to box get a smaller sized pvc pipe. Drops the temp on the inside to about temp outside and you get a nice breeze. I have a few customers on my route that looked at me crazy the first time they saw them but when they asked what they were for they were both fascinated and highly amused.
How absurd.
The real answer to the mail carriers’ heat-problem is the vehicle you see above — the Oshkosh NGDV. It cannot come soon enough:
Hopefully USPS is prioritizing hot climates for the rollout. Mail carriers have sweated long enough.
I’m sympathetic to the mail carriers, but an air-conditioned vehicle may not be the best solution. It’s been proven that repeatedly going from a cold to a hot temperature is hard on the body, as you never become adapted to the heat. Not that a postal van with AC would get that cold, because the window is often open. Air conditioning in the cargo hold would have a benefit, though, for keeping heat-sensitive cargo fresh and undamaged.
If I had such a job, I’d go out and buy a cooling vest. They start around $40. They contain slim packs of that common blue thermal gel that you chill in the fridge overnight. Combine that with a gel-filled neck scarf and you can shave 20 degrees off the apparent temperature, and it works in or out of the vehicle.
I think that’s nonsense. We all love AC and use it in our cars all the time. Delivery drivers do the same all over the world. Cooler is safer.
What? Do folks still think it’s 1972?
Going outside used to be tolerable in my hometown. Now, with every slapdash apartment complex blocking the coastal winds and stifling any airflow (dare I say the big double c word our great leader has banned?) you just sit in these puddles of 98 at 90% humidity. Drying out the air with the A/C at least gets rid of that humidity.
It isn’t the best solution, I agree. But unless you’re game to throw out every politico, even ones you agree with to get better building codes it’s going to be the best possible solution.
Umm, cars in hot climate countries have AC. It’s mandatory in fact.
So the cargo deserves AC but the meat pilot can do without?
Another point to be made:
Going to electric vehicles would also greatly reduce the heat from the drive train working its way into the cab. The (sub)urban routes don’t get the trucks moving fast enough to clear out the hot air around the drive train.
Back in the mid 80 many personal vehicles didn’t have AC and i would suspect that very few fleet/work vehicles had AC. The fact that the mail carriers still have to use vehicles from that time frame is the real crime and its not just the AC issue. Hay here’s an idea they need to hire DT to keep these piles going for another decade!
It’s not just mail carriers who have to endure the heat. I worked for 34 years at UPS, and those brown boxes could easily hit 130 degrees in hot weather. The new contract demands AC, but only in new equipment. None of the existing trucks.
And don’t get me started on heat in the winter.
I’d love to see one of those YouTube fabricators buy an LLV and hack it to run cooler, like retrofit a safari roof, fan-assisted swamp cooler, better fan technology, or old Land Rover style “scuttle vents” (or old school VW vent windows)… find a away to cycle air through the entire vehicle to keep the temps down. I’d bet the 3D printing community could come up with some solutions as well.
(in reality, they would probably focus on putting a boosted Hyabusa engine in it)
What’s also wild is how little postal workers are paid, particularly compared to UPS/FedEx etc. Most employees top out in the mid $30’s/hr but start at around $22. The “private” guys earn almost double. It will be interesting this summer as contracts are up for negotiations…
If you really want to go into a depressing rabbit hole, bypass the Reddit stuff and go to YouTube. There are a gazillion vids from USPS workers telling it like it is working there. The healthcare bennies recently changed for the worse, and while having a pension sounds sweet, it’s not nearly enough to live on long term.
Sure, it’s better than flipping burgers, but it’s a pretty shitty job overall.
This guy covers the agency really well as an employee…
https://www.youtube.com/@MrFinesse316
It’s also wild that people in the US think $60k a year is poorly paid. And also that (if you’re right), FedEx/UPS workers are on something like $100k a year. In the UK posties get pretty close to minimum wage, so more like £25k (~$30k) a year.
Depends where you are
60k a year is poorly paid, but for a job that is 6 days a week, starts at like 4am, and exposes you to angry dogs, angry humans, and all weather conditions it is EXTREMELY poor pay.
Sure, relative to US pay it’s not all that much considering the demands. But it puts someone in the top 1.1%, globally.
A lot of good that does them. If only they could commute from Sri Lanka to their job in Seattle every day.
It’s adjusted for purchasing power.
$60k is not nearly enough money in 2024. After taxes (state dependent) and let’s not forget health insurance, which as previously noted is not good, $60k gets a single adult a VERY modest lifestyle. Add in a spouse and a kid or two? Life gets tight real quick.
I mean, it’s obviously not going to make you rich. But it’s very good pay for an unskilled job. In a lot of parts of the US it’d make you pretty nicely off; in the expensive parts, you obviously won’t be buying a big house, but it’s still hardly poverty-stricken like people here are implying.
For comparison, a postie in London earns about £25k a year, and that’s in a city where housing is significantly more expensive than almost anywhere in the US.
Healthcare is free in London. Going to the ER with heat stroke in the US could easily bankrupt you if your household is only pulling in 60k annually.
USPS gets federal health insurance and a pension. Carriers won’t be living the high life but that’s not terrible for the skill level.
The USPS federal healthcare plan is extremely subpar compared to other government healthcare plans, like what Railroaders get.
The pension isn’t a true pension, rather it’s a wonky version of a pension. It’s too complicated to break down here, but it is super easy to google.
I did a bunch of research on the USPS when I almost accepted a job with them not too long ago.
Didn’t the UK privatize their postal service a while back? And, didn’t that privatization also result in hundreds of sub-postmasters being falsely prosecuted due to software errors in their poorly designed Horizon system? It sounds like the poor pay of the UK posties is due to the now-privately-run nature of the service. And to think – some in the US have been agitating for a privately-run US Postal Service!
It was privatised, yes – though it’s a weird privatisation with lots of requirements to provide a universal service and so-on. The shareholders have not done well, on the whole. Posties’ pay has risen since privatisation, compared to under government ownership.
Sorry, the facts are complicated and can’t be used to support whatever ideology you prefer.
You cannot buy any house AT ALL in my area on a 60k/yr income.
You can barely rent comfortably for that around here.
Cost of living is (obviously) completely dependent on where, in fact, you live. So blanket statements about salary are pretty worthless.
UK posties don’t have to pay for healthcare.
No, because this is a civilised country. But they still have far lower take-home pay.
Interesting. So is it fair to say you think the whole $2 raise I got at the largest manufacturing employer in the area somehow threw the market so out of whack it necessiated a doubling in rent for most non-section 8 developments and me having to move back home?
Whut?
I’m trying to illustrate that $60k isn’t living large anymore and might not even be a comfortable living even in a modest burg of ~50k.
Apples and oranges. I mean it’s almost like you’re describing a different country.
Weird
We’ll have fully capable, autonomous robot mail delivery vehicles before a functional, climate controlled vehicle for human carriers is fielded. All the complaining (justified as it may be) almost guarantees this because the human is the weak link in the system and the USPS will welcome the opportunity to cull the work force. They’ll still raise the price of postage every three months, though, because they’ll be paying pensions til the sun burns out.
My wife has a good friend whose husband is a mail carrier. I’ve only chatted with him once or twice, but he mentioned concern that he has hearing loss from the crazy loud fan in his LLV. We live in a dry area that gets triple digits in the summer but cools in the evenings, so I’m guessing they don’t have the neat rear cooler setup installed on any vehicles here. My local carrier also has a giant fan (12+” in diameter) mounted on the dash, and I can confirm the thing is louder than the Iron Duke powering the LLV.
As a regruntled former TE DCO for the USPS I can tell you that management, especially upper management, absolutely does not care. You are surrounded by posters and supervisors telling you how you’re an important and irreplaceable part of the organization but every single action and decision they make says the exact opposite. It’s borderline psychological torture levels of gaslighting.
We used to joke that if you died they would give you a half day off to attend your own funeral but you’d still get a red mark for missing the beginning of your shift.
In the old days we called it “going postal” but over the years that phrase got eclipsed by the sheer numbers of random mass shooters.
That’s the time period I worked there, mid-90s, it was in the news constantly and we were forbidden from using the phrase “going postal”. The funny thing was we were in a rougher part of town and all the businesses around us had car break-ins and such but ours never got touched. Apparently the USPS had street cred back then.
USPS should harness this as an asset, develop a line of jerky, dried vegetables and herbs and sell them
Soylent RedWhiteBlue
What they should do is just air condition the seat itself. Or if you want to get real fancy, have a vest they can slip on, that pumps cold refridgerant through it, so the cold is right against the body.
Blasting the AC with the windows open just uses so much power. It’s much more efficient to cool someone down through the surfaces that actually touch the user. It’s why radiant floor heating makes people comfortable even if the ambient air temps are lower.
The cooled seat seems like the best stop gap solution.
Those setups have condensation problems in humid areas, which can be an issue since they’re powered. In damp climates the dehumidifying effect of regular AC is a big help since, under the air, sweating helps cool you down instead of dehydrating you and nothing else.
We had a mail carrier in Dallas die last summer from the heat. Really sad. I hope his widow got a good settlement for losing her husband of 30+ years. His death could have been avoided. Crazy how after he died the usps changed their rules for cool down breaks in the metroplex, allowing for more of them.
Alternative title: Not a Fan
Or Hot delivery men/women in your area. Hah
Double post see witty comment below.
Damn I missed it. It should have been
“Click here for Hot GrumMan in your area” haha
These vehicles, by definition, are driving around with the windows or doors open, stopping to make deliveries every 200′-500′. The problem with installing A/C is in the immortal words of my dad, “What are you trying to do, cool the whole neighborhood?”
I get it, it sucks. But it’s also part of the job description. Jobs out in the weather will, invariably, have days that are too damn hot or too damn cold. See construction, see firefighting, see landscaping, see being a lifeguard.
Yes, and clothing with coolant circulating through tubes exists. https://www.thewarmingstore.com/circulatory-vests.html
But still, the job described in the article does sound particularly dreadful.
So we give our delivery people Dune fremen stillsuits? Hey get on it Bezos, Gates, Musk or whatever other billionaire they could use them in space also.
It’s a cheap version of the tech NASA uses as cooling in space-suits.
I haven’t read Dune in a very long time, but IIRC the stillsuit was to prevent loss of water through sweat and breath. Coolant-circulating undergarments are not complex or expensive. I’m surprised they aren’t more common in the really hot parts of the US – given what you lot earn for even crappy jobs, I’d have expected posties subject to the conditions in the article to buy their own if they aren’t provided (based on the quick google I just did that says they earn $60k+ a year).
Working for the post office is a career, not an after school job, so a living wage is a reasonable expectation. Depending on where you live in the US, 60K is really good (rural Iowa), okay (most of the Midwest), or just scraping by (any large metropolitan area). You can’t judge the reasonability of a wage just with a number, you also have to look at the location and the cost of living.
So certain people would like you to believe, anyway. The reality is that even in expensive parts of the US, $60k is far from ‘scraping by’. As I mentioned in another comment above, it’s in the top 1.1% globally, adjusted for purchasing power.
Just for some comparison, the average annual salary in London – not even the median – is roughly $60k. And London certainly isn’t cheaper to live in than expensive places in the US.
So, I don’t know what things are like in the UK, but here, if you make $60K, you probably take home closer to $35K after taxes, health insurance, and other withholdings. And believe it or not, in expensive areas, $60K is scraping by. When the average cost of a home is over $500K+ and rents are more expensive than mortgages, housing costs for even a meager dwelling can be upwards of $20K per year.
I think you’re using a very different definition of ‘just scraping by’ to me.
And fwiw homes that only cost $500k basically don’t exist in London.
https://www.zoopla.co.uk/house-prices/london/
Let’s use $1200/week as a salary check point. (40hrs.x$30/hr)
$4800/month pre-tax
Roughly $800/week after federal deductions and health premiums. Shave off a bit more for any 401k-type plan.
That leaves around $3k.
$3k
-$1300 (housing)
-$300 (utilities/phone/internet)-note no cable or streaming apps
-$300 (food)
———————-
$1100
Now throw in transportation costs (prob $300/month)
Any form of entertainment ($75/month)
Misc items ($100)
————————–
$625 left after living really tight.
$7500 for a whole year. This is assuming you never get sick, don’t wear glasses, Never eat out. Never take a vacation. Don’t drink/smoke/have a gf or bf. No (ex)wife or kids
That there, Chap, is scraping by.
The sad thing is that your health premium estimate is actually on the low end for some of us. I pay about $900 in healthcare premiums each month plus $100 a month in drugs. That’s because my wife has Crohn’s Disease. I can’t wait until the health insurance company hears about my recent Diabetes diagnosis…
And that’s the cheap plan offered by Galpin. A Marketplace plan was $1,400 a month before drug expenses and doctor visits, which, LOL! I’m glad David and co pay me handsomely. Woohoo, America!
First, sorry to hear about the diabetes thing. That’s a real drag, although on the silver lining side, it seems that treatment options are plentiful these days comparatively.
As far as premiums, I intentionally made it low, as that kinda number (about $50/week) is comparable to what the USPS offers now. That is gonna change some in the near future, so who knows? On the railroad, it used to be free, but now it’s some miniscule amount. My accident’s bills have totaled over $2 mil so far, and I didn’t have to pay a dime for any of it. Even dental with major work was free.
As for the premium for my part-time (but classified as full-time) gig at a major international hotel chain, it’s about $350/month and ain’t nothing to shout from the rooftops, lol. Fortunately for me, I only need 2 lifetime meds from my car accident, and cost plus drugs has been a lifesaver money wise for scripts. If you haven’t checked it out, I’d strongly recommend taking a look-see.
Long post, but the point still stands. $60k/year was pretty good in 2004 or, hell, even 2014. Now? Not so much.
Oh yeah, don’t take my comment as disagreeing with you. What folks in Europe may not understand is that the value of that $60k varies wildly depending on where you live in America. Statistics never tell the full story.
$60k in the middle of nowhere Iowa or in the barren parts of Detroit? Yeah, that could buy you a cozy life. But you make some concessions for that cheaper living. Super rural life means you have to own a car. And if you live a type of life that comes at odds with what the locals believe, then you have to deal with the fallout of that. Doctors in Illinois can legally claim a religious exemption to treating you if you’re trans. Ask me how I know! So, I have to stay close to Chicago for now if I want anything even close to good healthcare.
$60k in New York City or Los Angeles? Have fun living in a broom closet and if you aren’t in perfect health, probably living paycheck to paycheck. Maybe not “poor” but like many Americans, one bad day from catastrophe. MIT seems to think the living wage in NYC would be about $69k right now. But at least everything’s close and your chances of getting denied healthcare are lower.
Look into southeast Minnesota- You can find cheap housing within an hours drive of “mother” Mayo.
Minnesota has been in consideration! Sadly, we’re staying put for a while. The wife got cancer last year and we’re still paying off the surgery. Then my friend wrecked our Prius while under-insured, further hitting the finances. Sheryl’s doctor recently said she’ll likely need another surgery this year, too.
So, the dream house keeps getting punted into the future.
Having $7500 a year more than you need to live a decent lower-middle-class lifestyle is ‘just scraping by’? Yeah, those words don’t mean what you think they mean.
Just scraping by means struggling to find money for food from day to day. It means living in the cheapest place you can and struggling to pay the rent.
It’s offensive ultra-right-wing drivel to suggest that people in the top 1% globally are poor.
Did you not understand the part about how you need to be in perfect health and have absolutely nothing go wrong in your life, or even have a life, to actually end up with $7500?
It’s not ultra right wing drivel, lol. It’s the real world.
Anyway, you continue to prove my original point, which is that it’s wild that the propaganda has been so successful that people in the US genuinely believe crazy stuff like being a 1%er is barely scraping by, and that people with pretty decent earnings are povvos who should be shunned.
It’s also wild that you can’t see how crazy right wing this stuff you’re saying is.
Dude, this is it for this. You keep saying 1% of the world, which is meaningless. First World countries might as well be on a different planet than Sub-Saharan Africa or some other impoverished country like, I dunno, Yemen.
Sure $7500 fantasy dollars in an ideal situation is a shit ton of money in Burundi, but it ain’t shit in Boise. In fact, that is food stamps and Medicaid money.
If speaking to reality is “right wing” in your book, fucking call me Icarus for all I care.
Also, nobody said anything about shunning anyone. If you wanna spout non sequiturs, have at you, but don’t put words in people’s mouth.
It’s top 1% adjusted for purchasing power. But you’ve drunk the kool-aid so you keep clutching at straws trying to class 1%ers as povvos.
Your meaning is very clear, and if you don’t like what that makes you, the solution is to stop being like that, rather than to complain about people saying what you are.
The simple reality is that even in the US, $60k a year puts someone in the top 20%. It’s wild that you think it’s a starvation wage, rather than a very good income for an unskilled job.
I’ll let all of the single mothers without healthcare, child support, or food security know that they’re actually living extremely luxurious lives – grotesquely excessive, even. I’m sure that will make them feel better. Thanks for the insight!
You’re really stuck on comparing wages in the US and UK and telling us that 60K is living large. Has it occurred to you that neither wage is enough? That 30K in London is terrible, 60K in the US is terrible, and wages across the board need to be higher? I define “scraping by” as an income level so low you have no security from job loss and no hope of saving for retirement. Sounds like that’s reality on both sides of the pond.
So basically you just don’t mean what ‘scraping by’ normally means, got it.
I agree that less than £30k in London is very low pay. I completely disagree that 1%ers are terribly paid; that’s a ludicrous assertion and you shouldn’t swallow so much insane propaganda.
Davedave is someone who realized they were wrong about forty posts ago, but is too proud to back down from the “fight.” Fun times.
Maturity doesn’t always come with age…..or ever.
You have absolutely no clue what you are talking about if you honestly think $60k is “far from scraping by even in expensive parts of the US”.
Connecting/disconnecting a coolsuit would take too long, but some sort of gel vest that could be swapped out every hour would work. Especially paired with something that would cool one back down over the course of an hour or so (which is actually doable with the electric power available, unlike full AC)
You don’t have to cool down the whole vehicle, I would argue my car never gets cooled down overall, but rather the convection of the cold air hitting you directly. Yes it will be less efficient with the windows open but they are also absolutely baking under that massive windshield. Heatstroke is definitely not part of the job description for mail carriers, wtf man. Heat in construction and landscaping is a huge problem as well and I don’t know what the answer is but it’s disheartening states like Texas are actively repealing cooldown break mandates. Also lumping in firefighters into this group is ridiculous as they literally have to be surrounded by fire, I would argue they are the only ones here where it’s in the job description.
“Manglement” I wonder if they meant that…management mangles?
It fits…
Also…Newman would hate this
“Nobody really needs mail!”
Yes, im on rhe rmt forum and its intentional.
Thanks! I figured as much
This is a huge safety issue. Why is the postal workers union not helping out?
Gee, it’s almost as if these were designed back when air conditioning wasn’t really a necessity, a time when many consumer cars didn’t have it. You would almost think that something was happening “globally” that might be “changing” how climate affects the human body.
Climate change is real, but also, Arizona was hot in the 1980s.
Yes, but that’s a dry heat. When the dew point hits 95 or so, places are going to start becoming uninhabitable.
When did Arizona explode in population? I wonder how mail carrier time in the car changed based on the cities growing and also what the heat was like before as much pavement was laid down.
Yep, urban heat effect is real.
The military finally graces tank crews with AC with the M1A2, because the sight optics kept frying in the heat. Maybe our brothers in federal employment over at USPS should take a lighter to couple ECUs or something.
I’m actually quite happy that our soldiers inside the Abrams have A/C. I sure don’t want sweat in their eyes when they’re shooting at somebody who’s trying to invade my country.
If the US is fending off an invasion with tanks, something’s gone very far wrong and we’re likely screwed.
You are so right. Geography is our defense.
So you are saying the snail mail needs Abrams in their fleet? Kind of a scary and crazy thought but I could get behind that. More tanks on the streets the better as I always say.
They might actually be more fuel efficient.
Abrams use jet fuel.
The turbine powered Abrams is abominable on fuel they should have been diesels but Chrysler got the contract because they were going down the tubes and it was a gift from the fedgov.
Does pretty well in an urban environment, fits quite a bit mail. Don’t even have to get out to deliver. Can be kept operational by a collection of 20 year olds. We have a lot of them. I see no problems. #Abrams4usps.
Picturing shooting mail out of the turret just made me chuckle. We can load the mail in those little capsules they use in pneumatic tubes at the bank.
If you remember all the people bitching that the NGDV still has horrible fuel economy, this is where you can make note that they compared it with the A/C running full blast to make it look worse, then didn’t disclose that in all the news articles.
It will suck way less than the LLV on hot days, but rest assured it will still suck. It’s jut not possible to keep a vehicle cool with a door constantly open.
Just adding a counterpoint on it being the forthcoming savior.
Not to mention it’s powered by one of ford’s more recalled engines, and the trans is supplied by a company widely renowned for garbage transmissions.
I wonder if adding a powerful downward pointing fan above the door that runs when it’s open could reduce losses. Similar to the fans you occasionally see on drive thru windows or in business entrances. I’m not sure if an air curtain would save more energy than it uses but it would help keep cabin temps lower.
Provided one could open both sliding doors while driving and one didn’t have to wear a specific uniform, I don’t think it would be too bad. However that makes it so you can’t use the mail tray for mail, and I doubt the USPS would get rid of their uniform requirement.
I hope with the new USPS Van it’ll have good insulation and a door for the cargo compartment, that way the AC only has to cool the driver’s compartment and in doing so it should get colder quicker vs having to cool all of the van’s interior.
I don’t think that’s the case. At 100°, there’s not a whole lot to exchange your body heat out into, and that’s just ambient. 120°+ is urgently dangerous, and these LLVs are going above that.
https://www.wtsp.com/article/weather/weather-explainer/wet-bulb-globe-temperature-heat-safety/67-2644ded9-9858-48b5-a59f-4dc9612ebc21
To be fair the climates I live in are dry, and on very very hot days I have used evaporative cooling via wetted clothes and it helps quite a lot.
100° and humid is a different story.
Our mail carrier never wears a uniform, when it’s hot he’s usually in a sleeveless shirt and shorts. With a cooler right next to him full of drinks. Humidity here is awful in the summer, and I feel bad for the guy. Temps in the 90s and above, are absolutely suffocating when the humidity is high as well. If he didn’t already have his own cooler I’d be leaving him cold drinks by my mailbox.
UPS does this (or at least used to?) with their custom step-vans. They didn’t want to put in AC for their drivers because they viewed it as another thing to break/maintain.
But I don’t agree with it, A/C should be a requirement for drivers. It also is a safety issue too, as it does a much better job at defogging a windshield vs. non-ac vehicles.
Yeah where I work our trucks won’t pass their annual FAI if they do not have working A/C but I don’t it actually isn’t a DOT requirement for vehicles to have working A/C which is crazy for delivery drivers.
Cannot edit for some reason but meant to say I don’t think it is a DOT requirement*
Correct, it isn’t a DOT requirement…yet.
But it should be for certain model year vehicles going forward, I think.
I have a friend who is a letter carrier. Yes to everything awful about the Grumman LLV.
He drove a few rural routes in the RHD Mercedes (er, Eagle Head) Metris and while it was a much better vehicle, the thickness of the conventional front door vs the sliding doors on the LLV meant he sometimes had to pull past the mailbox, park and get out to put unwieldy stuff in the box.
He’s convinced that the optimal USPS delivery vehicle is not an EV, but would rather be a diesel, running on bio-diesel.
The data on USPS mail vans is astonishing: https://www.greatbusinessschools.org/usps-long-life-vehicle/
It’s no wonder so many other postal agencies around the world have switched to electric.
There’s no way any purely-ICE drivetrain makes sense, whether diesel or gas. Maybe hybrid for rural routes, but at <20 miles of stop-and-go for a typical mail route pure electric is the way to go.
Isn’t the real problem the weird insistence on using custom vehicles, unlike every other postal service in the world?
I mean, I thought the idea was to explicitly design the vehicles for long service lives, extra durability, minimal maintenance requirements, and of course RHD.
I seem to recall reading the LLV was absolutely torture-tested before adoption. Thousands of engine off/on cycles, potholes, etc.
I bet EVs could handle this duty way, way better than a gas car.
Not in a Michigan winter they can’t..
They’ll do extremely well in the winter compared to ICE cars. Mail routes don’t require a ton of range.
I guess this would depend where at in winter. Where I am in the winter time they actually start driving wranglers around since I am in a more “rural” area and the roads around me are plowed way later and they barely salt and just plow them essentially once. Cities should be fine in the winter for EV’s but I think in rural areas you are still going to see ICE. Well even around me now I rarely see the grummans. Most the time it is just a minivan or a jeep renegade that they sometimes slap a USPS sticker on. Though Amazon does have the Rivian trucks around me now so who knows maybe EV’s for snail mail will be fine around me.
Depends on where. Some routes out west are over 200 miles per day.
Mines 122 miles, with the top in our office being 145, up and down hills and extremely poorly maintained roads.
Yeah Rural routes would be an exception to the EV rule for sure. Are many of those using Grumman’s as of now? Or would they continue as the ones near me are, using some kind of convenient SUV or wagon?
No, around here the roads are too bad, terrain too rough for llvs. I use a rhd XJ, the other carriers use rhd JK’s. In the winter there are many times we can’t service the entire route because of snow or ice.
You’re delivering post in a Jaaag? Is it an XJ40, or one of the bloated newer ones?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XJ_(XJ40)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeep_Cherokee_(XJ)
The Jag is a much nicer idea, so I don’t care about your stinkin’ facts.
Why not? Heated seats, reasonable distances, overnight charging…sounds perfect to me.
I recently talked to an Amazon delivery person using the Rivian van. He didn’t like it because running AC, heat or stereo used so much of the battery. I’m sure USPS management will be very understanding when the battery runs out before the route is done because someone wanted to not die of heat stroke.
Heating & cooling are the big energy users in your house, they’ll always be a issue for EVs. ICEs give you the waste heat “for free”, and the cooling for a relatively small decrease in mpg. But you probably don’t even notice the decrease, because ICEs are so inefficient. At highway speed, driving with A/C may even be more efficient than driving with the windows open, due to the better aero.
Isn’t it just about some sort of pork-barreling? RHD work vans exist, because a fair proportion of the world drives on the correct side. They’re tough enough, reliable enough, economical enough, and cheap enough that there’s no way in hell the NGDV will ever be cheaper overall. It’s $60k per unit, or some such crazy figure.
We wouldn’t want to source this from overseas, I would think. American-made vehicles for an American government agency. (Not making a judgment on whether that’s a good attitude, but I assume that’s a big part of the thinking.)
You could buy Fords, if that sort of daft criterion – to my mind, pretty much pork-barreling, even if not the exact definition – is mandatory. The e-Transit could easily be made in the US, by Ford, in RHD, given the number needed.
https://media.ford.com/content/fordmedia/fna/us/en/news/2024/01/22/usps-unveils-e-transit-parcel-delivery-vans-and-charging-infrast.html
Apparently they already ordered over 9,000 of them.
Yes, there does seem to be ample evidence, including the USPS’s own purchasing decisions, that the custom vehicles are unnecessary and pointless even without factoring in the lengthy delays to upgrading the fleet that they cause.
I’m pretty sure they’re just “stopgap” vehicles until they can get more of their own in larger numbers. Every different vehicle in their fleet adds logistical complexity, and again, mail trucks have a much harder life than most vehicles, I would think. So I’d be surprised if they last as long as custom vehicles.
Yes, but that proves that in fact other vehicles can do the job. And I very much doubt that the long-term cost is higher. Yes, the service life might not be 30 years, but if the purchase cost if half or a third, who cares?
Anyway, the point of the article is that longevity can actually be a bad thing, when it leaves you with something that’s no longer fit for purpose which you have to keep using because you paid through the nose to build it to too high a spec.
They already run a bunch of Mercedes Metris vans. They had to put a custom emblem over the Mercedes logos, people were complaining about tax dollars being spent on “luxury vehicles”.
I also wonder what the operating costs on those are like. They paying Mercedes replacement part prices?
They’re used as fleet vehicles in Europe, prices probably aren’t bad for common parts.
Apples to oranges, but I’ve noticed parts for my Volvo are cheaper than parts for my 4Runner. European doesn’t necessarily = more expensive.
I always joke that “I drive a BMW because I can’t afford a Honda.” Honda parts are expensive.
It’s crazy. I’m actually thinking of ditching my 4Runner for some sort of 15-year-old Land Rover for off-roading, and a similarly old Volvo for a daily.
You can spend thousands to lift a Toyota 2″ the “right” way to keep alignment in spec, meanwhile it’s less than $100 to lift an air suspension Rover the same amount and not screw up alignment.
American made for government agencies is generally not a requirement as far as I can tell. I’m in the DC area and I see Hyundais with government plates regularly.
Well, yeah–but that’s, say, Congresspeople/their staff, correct? Cars used for normal car things. Whether that’s their own, I’m not sure.
But if USPS is getting their vehicles built from scratch, I can understand the industry(/corruption but let’s set that aside for now) and optics angles for building them in-country.
Actually it’s motor pool vehicles for agency use that I was referring to. Law enforcement, IRS, others. I get the idea though that a big fleet of purpose built vehicles should be made domestically and I pretty much agree, with some caveats.
There actually are rules about domestic product content in federal procurement (Federal Acquisition Regulation – FAR). It will probably SHOCK you to learn that those rules are quite complex.
It would shock me far more to learn that they were simple. I work with the government regularly and nothing governmental is simple and straight forward, mostly because congress often puts their pet interests in the rules when they approve agency funding.
Yes, I read the RFI/RFQ from the USPS. The good was they interviewed everyone who touched or came near the mail van. The bad is they didn’t prioritize and cull the list, so you ended up with the Homer Simpson mobile rather than just a BEV OEM van.
They copied the styling, too.
Honestly, it baffles me that at no point did anyone say ‘hang on a sec, how have we come up with unique requirements? What do other postal services use? What does Amazon use?’
In fairness, Amazon looked at the available COTS options and also decided on custom delivery vehicles. So USPS isn’t completely unique in this regard (though they seem to be expecting more customization than Amazon does).
Another point missing here is.. the USPS is insanely under-funded, more than any other government agency. There is no money for anything you would think is normal for this type of work environment.
I think a follow up to this article would be a discussion around how the USPS is funded, and why it is robbed of its budget YoY and will never, ever recover, and tie that into the vehicles.
And the funding issues can largely be traced to one godawful piece of legislation: the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006. Having to prefund the retiree benefits 75 years in advance is so far beyond what any other agency, group, or company has to do. They went from budget surpluses to shortfalls basically overnight once that was passed.
Sure, they should have figured out AC while they had surpluses, but everything got a lot worse once the surpluses disappeared.
YES… THIS!
Have the Republicans ever done anything in recent memory that ISN’T truly terrible? I think not.
No, they haven’t. Because they don’t work for us.
Nope. The Republicans have made it very clear that their dream is to live in a Russia-esque autocracy. Achieving that dream requires destroying the existing country first, so that’s the current “stage.” I’ll give them credit, I frankly appreciate the honestly of the modern-GOP, even if I find their goals absolutely reprehensible. At least they’re now admitting that they want to destroy America.
And then deflect by saying that it’s the Dems and Libz that hate America. I think that more than an autocracy, they also want a theocracy, though for a lot of them it’s just pandering to get that part of the base on board.
Step 1: Underfund the government agency
Step 2: Screech about the agency’s poor performance
Step 3: Use poor performance as excuse to further reduce funding and/or outsource to private companies.
Step 4: Profit.
That is exactly the playbook. The USPS was profitable before 2006. Congress decided that the USPS needed to fund retirement benefits a crippling 75 years in advance, and suddenly the agency had the largest net loss in its history. Those who wanted to change things could point to that and call it massive government waste or mismanagement.
“USPS needed to fund retirement benefits a crippling 75 years in advance”
The ’75 years in advance’ bit is meaningless. They were forced to fund the retirement benefits they were promising, because when their actual costs were factored in, they weren’t profitable.
Of course, the idea a national postal service should be profitable is nonsense, too. Is the US public school system expected to be profitable?
The public school system is intended to be profitable in terms of having an educated populace which can do work that it otherwise may not be able to, increasing government income tax revenue. The schools don’t necessarily profit themselves, but society, as a whole, should.
To some extent, USPS competes with FedEx and UPS, so it’s important it is kept profitable or close, because without USPS rural people, especially, would be greatly disadvantaged.
Yes, public services are intended to be of benefit to society and the economy. That’s not the same thing as being profitable. The idea the national postal service should be run on a commercial basis makes very little sense; it’s something that pays for itself in other ways, like roads, and schools, and universal healthcare…
The 75 years in advance is the part that was completely unprecedented. That’s prefunding retirement benefits for people who haven’t entered the workforce. Ensuring funding for retirement benefits is good. Tying that funding up 75 years in advance is not. It also doesn’t help that they are required to put that money into US Treasury securities, instead of the typical mix that other pensions usually utilize to increase returns.
But, yeah, there’s no reason to expect any government service to turn a profit. That’s not the point of public services and should not be the point. We should be funding those services for everyone, not expecting necessary services to extract money from people who utilize them.
But profit’s been a focus of those who insist that the private sector is the solution to most/all problems. And, sadly, some of it’s the same crowd that point to NASA spending and SpaceX profits without considering that those profits come from government contracts and are still government spending.
No, I meant it’s actually meaningless. It isn’t even wrong. It’s like measuring a 0-60 time in lbs-ft.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ebauer/2020/04/14/post-office-pensions–some-key-myths-and-facts/
I’m really not all that up on US domestic debates about how to organise a postal service. I would observe in a non-partisan manner that it might well be cheaper, in the current era, to contract-out the deliveries, at least in some areas, because companies like Amazon are already doing rounds there, and could have some relatively small incremental costs. But any decision should be made on the merits, rather than because of ideology.
Hey there is no conflict on interest with postmaster of the USPS or any government agency every single one of them is run as best as they can. Yes sir no problem our government is perfect. (Hopefully big brother hears my positive thoughts about them.) Just like when the FCC was ran by Pai no conflict of interest there at all. Everything was for the best for the people yes sir. Everything is better when the government appointments former big wigs of the private sector into big public seats that create rules and laws for those private sector companies. Why yes I love the US government. US Government is love US government is life. (Who ever read this goofy ass rambling on I am sorry haha)
LOL. Rant away. Whatever helps (even if only for a moment!).
Just a mention of Ajit Pai running the FCC makes my eye twitch. If someone reminds me of Betsy fucking DeVos running the Department of Education one of my eyes might actually pop out of my goddamn head.
Not to be triggering here. But the Orange Turd, (and convicted criminal) was one of the best at placing friends, campaign contributors, and total assholes into the Gov.
You know, “I know all the best people.” Right.
November is not that far away.
We all need to vote to preserve the system we have. Please and thank you…
[DELETEd, BECAUSE c’mon]
Republican playbook. Outsource everything to private companies to enable them to extract every cent they can from the citizens. It doesn’t matter that everyone is worse off as long as the campaign donations keep rolling in.
I would say that is the playbook for every politician. Everything seems to be to the benefit of the companies and not the people. It is just each side has different companies that are backing them.
Name a Dem pol who has defunded an agency and then called it out for failing.
Go ahead, we’re listening.
I agree with you to an extent but one side SEEMS to be doing it a lot more recently because their voters don’t care and will vote for them even if they murder someone.
The Overton window in the US has a view of the Nuremberg rally grounds. Even your ‘far left’ politicians are further right than anything even vaguely mainstream in Europe – including AfD, whatever Meloni’s neo-fash are called, and so-on.
I don’t think there’s much chance of anything changing in the short or medium term, so clearly it’s time to admit that secession was a mistake, give up on this rogue-government-in-Washington nonsense, and return to UK rule.
(insert not sure if joking gif here) but I would prefer we don’t go back under British rule. But yeah didn’t think me saying I think both parties are corrupt and only see ways of benefiting themselves would upset people so much. Why I stay out of politics nowadays just seems you have to be one side of another. Cannot agree or disagree nowadays with certain things without being labeled something hateful. Now back to talking about hot stuffy Grummans that are overheating our poor postal workers.
I can see why it upset people. Both parties are bad, but one is an awful lot worse than the other. I don’t think you meant they’re equally bad, but that’s how it might easily be read.
P.S. It’s not like the UK would accept you coming back anyway. We invested a lot of effort into digging the Atlantic Moat…
Yup again why I try to not bring up the topic. I will crap talk about the government but I try to not say what side I lean towards but I don’t like painting the people that support one side or the other as all these terrible horrible people just because all their views do not align with mine or politicians they have voted for are not good people. Me personally I just want to go to work, make money to support my family and I while having the smallest amount of government and also company interference in my life which sad thing is that is asking for a lot nowadays it seems. I could talk about other things but this is a website about vehicles so I try to not ramble off that topic. So again back to hot and stuffy Grummans.
I often wish I was Bri’ish, or at least lived there, you guys have great humor and slang and no threat of medical bankruptcy.
I try to avoid talking politics unless I completely know my audience, but I do find that I typically have more in common than not with my conservative coworkers. End of the day we just want what’s best for ourselves and our families, we just may have different ideas of what that entails.
I think it’s the people that are way too online that are the most extreme and unreasonable. For the most part I don’t have a problem with “the other side”, it’s the politicians and news networks that stoke the division that I have a problem with. Some people take everything as truth and get really wrapped up in that BS.
I have a friend who’s the polar opposite of me, and he’s one of the nicest people I know. He’s a great family man who’d give you the shirt off his back.
Shut up and Buy my Bible, you freak…../s
So this is why all the people that work at the post offices are always so grumpy because they had drive these things in hot as hell weather with no A/C. They must have pay back on all the people that they are delivering paper spam to on a daily basis while dying from heat exhaustion.
It must really suck to go through all that only to see 3/4 of what you deliver tossed into a recycle bin without ever making it into the house. Very disheartening to see your work results in a lot of annoyance for your customer.
A couple of years ago I found 5 or 6 bales of those ‘to every mailbox’ circulars in my office’s dumpster. I reported it to my local post office. Got the video of the employee dumping it and gave it to the post master. She basically said there was nothing to be done about the postal carrier (union) and have a nice day.
If I had paid for a local ad in a local flyer thing in my area I’d have been more pissed about this than I already was.
On the one hand, it is great to have union protection for when I screw up. As a supervisor, I’d love to lose the union so I can get rid of the deadwood on my staff. I am truly on the fence about unions. I have worked places that could really have used the help, but in other places the union has way too much power. The only way I’ve found around it is to try to hire people who actually take pride in doing a good job and then take care of them to the best of my abilities so that union protections aren’t needed in the first place. That’s a difficult balancing act.