Curbside mail delivery vs. porch-side mail delivery...

[cltiney]

I cant get delivery on my side of the street...so all mail boxes are put on one side of the road and its a subdivision. need to call somebody just don't know who, I've already tried the postmaster.
Anybody can help?

[flyonpa]

It's one of the cost saving the USPS is doing now, All Mail boxes on one side, so the Carrier only has to go down one side of the street to deliver the mail (Saves Time, and Mileage on delivery) .

Have you tried putting a mailbox on the "other" side of the street? With your house number? On the box so the carrier knows what address it belongs to?

Have you physically gone into your Delivery Post Office and talked face to face with the PostMaster, not one of the Postal Clerks?

[Retriever]

Originally Posted by flyonpa

It's one of the cost saving the USPS is doing now, All Mail boxes on one side, so the Carrier only has to go down one side of the street to deliver the mail (Saves Time, and Mileage on delivery) .

That practice is actually not something that is of recent origin.

When I moved to my semi-rural neighborhood--exactly 20 years ago--I noticed that mailboxes were only placed along one side of the "through road", and that homeowners who lived on that road had to cross to the other side of the road in order to retrieve their mail. Ironically, my development has mailboxes directly in front of each home, so I don't quite understand why many of the older homes have all of the mailboxes on one side of the road, while the newer houses don't have this...limitation...but I can tell you that there are definitely locations where the USPS specifies that mailboxes can only be placed along one side of the road.

[Blue biker]

Originally Posted by tdstyles

Because this isn't their fault either. The biggest cost driver for the mail delivery are not the costs of delivering the mail but the ridiculous health and pension benefits offered to most employees past and present and that is not a USPS issue that is a union issue. It would be much easier to cut the benefit to the public than to cut the benefits to the union , that is Union Rule #1. Any competition playing by the same rules(and dealing with the NALC) is going to have the exact same problem. Now if this was a privatized, de-unionized industry I would agree you might see some cost savings by competition but the AFL-CIO runs the USPS and is running it into the ground. Again this IMO.

The biggest cost of the pension benefits is the requirement to fund retire benefits 75yrs in advance. They are funding benefits for future retirees that aren't even born yet!
This was set up by members of Congress that want to privatize the USPS so some big contributors (thing Fred Smith of FedEx) can take over the postal service. The USPS is the only quasi governmental entity that has to do this.
The USPS depends on no federal monies to run, yet is hamstrung by Congress when they want to close offices in certain areas. Don't forget your congressperson doesn't have to pay for that cheery pat themselves on the back newsletter they send you.

I will say sometimes the employees of the USPS can be their own worst enemies. I lived in a 2 family house, apartments had separate mailboxes marked A and B yet for the 4 yrs I lived there the mailman was a: putting all the mail in one box, or after I complained, b: basically splitting the package of mail for each box and putting mail for A and B in both boxes.

Where I live now, I had a LAZY mail person who, when I was expecting and tracking registered mail that I had to sign for, put a "sorry we missed you" notice in my mailbox when I was home and saw here stop at the mailboxes. (we have 10 or 12 mounted on a post). This has happened a few times, once I waited all week for a check before their tracking improved and I get home one day and find a "final notice" that the check was going to be sent back. I got ballistic over that one.

[Taiko]

Originally Posted by cltiney

I cant get delivery on my side of the street...so all mail boxes are put on one side of the road and its a subdivision. need to call somebody just don't know who, I've already tried the postmaster.
Anybody can help?

The quick answer is no. If you once had door to door delivery grandfathered in and the service tried to change the mode of delivery a congressional representative may have tried to stop the service from saving the time and money by forcing us to continue more costly door to door delivery methods.

In most new subdivision construction you would not get door to door or curbside delivery but rather would have to go to a centralized community bank of boxes since it is cheaper for the carrier to go to one spot and "deliver" to multiple delivery points rather than spend his day in transit between delivery points.

The service wants to eliminate routes like mine where I deliver to only 300 points in 8 hours because I am walking from point to point and replace routes like mine with routes where the carrier goes to a single point and "delivers" (he takes it to an offsite central point rather than making you go to a P.O. Box)to lets say 300 families and businesses for easy math and then moves to the next centralized spot and continues to do that for 8 hours meaning that route gets to ten times or more possible deliveries than the old grandfathered in doorstep delivery routes.

[nybbler]

Originally Posted by Taiko

In most new subdivision construction you would not get door to door or curbside delivery but rather would have to go to a centralized community bank of boxes since it is cheaper for the carrier to go to one spot and "deliver" to multiple delivery points rather than spend his day in transit between delivery points.

I hate those centralized boxes. They're too small for anything larger than a letter, so a lot of mail gets rolled, folded, and otherwise mutilated. Small packages go in one or two larger boxes in the bank, and if there are too many packages or the box is too small, you get the dreaded yellow notice telling you that you have to go pick up your package or it's going back.

Also my road is fairly steep, which means climbing a hill to get the mail.

[CaptainNJ]

Originally Posted by Blue biker

The biggest cost of the pension benefits is the requirement to fund retire benefits 75yrs in advance. They are funding benefits for future retirees that aren't even born yet!

complain when the pension benefits arent funded; complain when the pension benefits are funded.

[CaptainNJ]

i just tried to quickly google the exact pre-funding requirement and its clearly something that nobody wants to give in their propaganda (either side). i guess they figure nobody likes to read boring facts and just wants to be told what to believe.

[Taiko]

Originally Posted by CaptainNJ

i just tried to quickly google the exact pre-funding requirement and its clearly something that nobody wants to give in their propaganda (either side). i guess they figure nobody likes to read boring facts and just wants to be told what to believe.

Try the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, H.R. 6407. You can dry read it yourself without the current or past spin of the postal unions, libertarians wishing to sell off the service and other interested parties like commercial mailers.