Mail Carrier: The Man or Woman on the Road

Mail Carrier
Grade: Level 6
Salary Range: $31,124 - $40,182
Persons Eligible to Apply: Open to the general public

Examination Requirement: Must pass the 473 Battery Test and the driving test.

As a mail carrier or letter carrier, you’ll be required to sort, rack, and tie mail at the post office before you start deliveries within your route or area of delivery. In sorting letters, you must arrange them in the same order as the streets occur on the route. Letters and magazines for occupants of an apartment complex must be tied together with a rubber band or a belt. If you make a mistake in reading an address, the letter may go into the wrong home mailbox, causing a delay in delivery. The next day, you may find a note that says, “This is not ours. Opened by mistake.” The letter might be a “deadline” letter, an order from the court, or a warning from a creditor.

As a mail carrier or letter carrier, you’ll also maintain required information, record changes of addresses, maintain other reports, and forward undeliverable-as-addressed mail.

In some ways, a rural carrier’s duty is a different from that of a city carrier. If you are hired as a rural carrier or a rural carrier associate, you’ll be a jack of all trades; you’ll also be a “walking post office.” You may carry stamps, scales, and other equipment and supplies to serve the people of the rural area you cover. For this reason, you must know how to compute the cost of a piece of mail or a package whether it’s going to a neighboring city, Somalia, or the North Pole.

Regular Route

Once you’re a regular carrier, you’ll have a regular route. Day in and day out, you’ll walk on the same streets and open the same mailboxes. You won’t get lost and you’ll probably have time for a cup of coffee at McDonald’s or Burger King after you’ve finished covering your route.

As a letter carrier, you can become “the great observer.” As you pound the streets on your route, you’ll notice unusual lawn ornaments, flagpoles, signs, and other out-of-the-ordinary things.

Once a letter carrier saw this sign nailed to a wooden fence. “Dogs: Beware of Letter Carriers.”

If you’re still a flexible carrier, that’s a different story. Sometimes, as a flex, you’ll cover different routes every day. Before you go out, you’ll have to look at the city map to see where you are going so that you’ll finish delivering all your mail. You’ll cover the routes of carriers who are off on a particular day or who have called in sick. Don’t worry — once they were flexibles, and your time will come. Seniority is the rule in the post office.

Love Notes

If you are a carrier, you must remember names as well as you can. If you don’t, you’ll receive many notes on envelopes: “How many times have we told you that this man moved five years ago!” or “I’ve told you a dozen times that this man has long been dead!”

Once a friend of mine who is a letter carrier found some notes on an envelope returned to him: “Gone! Not back! Not coming back anymore!”

Road Adventures

I asked my mail carrier or letter carrier friend whether he had ever been accosted by anyone on the streets while he was covering his route.

“Yes, many times,” he said.

“By thieves?” I asked.

“No...by retirees,” he responded.

Sometimes in the spring or the fall, you’ll have to bring an umbrella or a raincoat. When it rains, it pours. You may also wish to put a sticker on the back bumper of your car or jeep that says: “Warning—I Give a ‘Break” to Animals.”

Undeliverable-As-Addressed (UAA) Mail

Undeliverable-as-addressed mail is sent to the Computerized Forwarding System (SFS) unit in every sectional center, where mail is processed. Previously processed by the mark-up clerks in every post office. undeliverable-as-addressed mail goes to the CFS for forwarding. Changes of addresses are computerized, and every change of address (COA) is entered into the system, where it is stored on the computer hard drive. When the letter, magazine, or package is keyed—that is, when the operator types in the first three letters of the last name and the last two numbers of the street address—the computer generates a corresponding label.

Examination Requirements

As an application for a mail carrier position, you have to pass an entrance examination known as 473 Battery Test, which is the most commonly-given exam in the Postal Service.

To be a carrier, you must have an operator’s permit for driving and you must undergo and pass a road test.