6 Miles/Day ?

[pehayes]

Lockdown time is a good time for maintenance.  Crabbed a frame for new EV clutch.  Some additional parts required.  Ordered from MG-Cycle. (not their fault)

March 20, 09:37 shipped out of Albany, WI
March 20, 11:02 arrived at regional center Palatine, IL
March 20, 15:00 departed Palatine
March 25, 13:34 arrived Chicago
Palatine to Chicago is 31 miles in 5 days????

Who knows when it will get to the left coast.   

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

[Lannis]

Lockdown time is a good time for maintenance.  Crabbed a frame for new EV clutch.  Some additional parts required.  Ordered from MG-Cycle. (not their fault)

March 20, 09:37 shipped out of Albany, WI
March 20, 11:02 arrived at regional center Palatine, IL
March 20, 15:00 departed Palatine
March 25, 13:34 arrived Chicago
Palatine to Chicago is 31 miles in 5 days????

Who knows when it will get to the left coast.   

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA

I suppose the logistics guys have it figured out.

They no longer sort mail at our local post office.   Everything that gets mailed from my mailbox or my local PO goes to Greensboro, NC, 105 miles away as a first step.

So if I mail something from Spout Spring PO to a friend 2 miles away with a Concord address, it goes to Greensboro (105 miles) then to Roanoke (80 miles) then to Concord (60 miles).   

The amazing part is that it sometimes gets there the next day.   But sometimes not ....

Lannis

[Two Checks]

A friend used to drive a contract USPS truck. He went to four POs nightly.
If a letter was mailed from city #1 to city #2 it went from the home or business to the PO. That night he went to PO #1 and picked it up. Then he went to PO #2. Did he drop off that letter? No. He took it to the bulk mail center at the end of the run.
Next night he went to the BMC and picked up his mail. Then he went back to PO #1 where the letter originated! Then he dropped it off at PO #2.
That system doubled the time it took for the letter to be delivered. But it created more work at the BMC.

[Lannis]

A friend used to drive a contract USPS truck. He went to four POs nightly.
If a letter was mailed from city #1 to city #2 it went from the home or business to the PO. That night he went to PO #1 and picked it up. Then he went to PO #2. Did he drop off that letter? No. He took it to the bulk mail center at the end of the run.
Next night he went to the BMC and picked up his mail. Then he went back to PO #1 where the letter originated! Then he dropped it off at PO #2.
That system doubled the time it took for the letter to be delivered. But it created more work at the BMC.

My grandfather was a mail clerk on a train that ran from Washington DC to Monroe, Virginia (yes, THAT Monroe: "They give him his orders at Monroe, Virginia
Sayin', "Steve, you're way behind time
This is not 38, but it's Old 97
You must put her in Spencer on time.")

He sorted mail on the train as it rolled along.

Ten mail trains a day used to come down the Norfolk and Western line at the little whistle-stop of Evergreen.   You could put a letter into the post office there in the morning to someone in Roanoke, Virginia, 90 miles away, and get an answer back that same afternoon.

Some things work better today, some don't ....

Lannis

[cliffrod]

In late Nov 2000, I flew down to TN from VT,  married wife #3, packed her truck and headed back to my small hometown to VT a few days later.   Arrived home late in the day, well after dark.  No fanfare, just a new out-of-state 4x4 in the driveway. We checked in with my grandparents next door and went to bed.  I went to work at the stone shed the next morning at 6:15am.  She's been to town briefly the previous summer, but knows almost no one except my grandparents.

Just after 8am, she gets a phone call.

"Hi. This is Bev (the postmaster downstreet and an old girlfriend's mother) down at the Post Office.  You're Beth, Clint's new wife, right?"
"Yes"
"Well, there's a package here for Marian (my grandmother, who was no longer driving.) Thelma (my great Aunt who helps my grandparents and drives past the PO on the way to my grandparents) has a doctor's appointment up in Montpelier this morning so she won't be going to Art and Marian's today.  Wayne has already left with the mail truck, but I know Marian has been expecting this package.  As long as you're home, why don't you run downstreet and get it for her?  It'll be good to meet you." 

So she did. 

She fit in to the small town VT scene very well.  Playing along with that whole situation probably helped....  My wife still laughs about that.

[Roebling3]

Sweet. And there wasn't a world crises that day. People can be nice all the time - not just in VT.  R3~

[Steve Cas]

In late Nov 2000, I flew down to TN from VT,  married wife #3, packed her truck and headed back to my small hometown to VT a few days later.   Arrived home late in the day, well after dark.  No fanfare, just a new out-of-state 4x4 in the driveway. We checked in with my grandparents next door and went to bed.  I went to work at the stone shed the next morning at 6:15am.  She's been to town briefly the previous summer, but knows almost no one except my grandparents.

Just after 8am, she gets a phone call.

"Hi. This is Bev (the postmaster downstreet and an old girlfriend's mother) down at the Post Office.  You're Beth, Clint's new wife, right?"
"Yes"
"Well, there's a package here for Marian (my grandmother, who was no longer driving.) Thelma (my great Aunt who helps my grandparents and drives past the PO on the way to my grandparents) has a doctor's appointment up in Montpelier this morning so she won't be going to Art and Marian's today.  Wayne has already left with the mail truck, but I know Marian has been expecting this package.  As long as you're home, why don't you run downstreet and get it for her?  It'll be good to meet you." 

So she did. 

She fit in to the small town VT scene very well.  Playing along with that whole situation probably helped....  My wife still laughs about that.

Time sure have changed. I mailed a Christmas card to a friend in VT, small town- population around 1200 people. I mailed it to their street address , not realizing they didn't have a mail box, not their PO box. The local postmaster sent it back rather than dropping it the PO box located in the same post office!

[cliffrod]

Time sure have changed. I mailed a Christmas card to a friend in VT, small town- population around 1200 people. I mailed it to their street address , not realizing they didn't have a mail box, not their PO box. The local postmaster sent it back rather than dropping it the PO box located in the same post office!

There's still some happy small town Post Office stuff in the world.  Well, sort of... 

Fast forward nearly 20 yrs,  Shop Cat (actual name, nothing else) at our bike shop here in SC had become a fixture all along the street, including across the street at our small local Post office.  She even became a regular, hopping up on the counter to nap and visit with PO customers when she wasn't lounging among the bikes in the shop.  Nice kitty.  All was happy in our contemporary Mayberry.

That all worked well until about a year ago.  Shop Cat didn't like one of her admirers. So she immediately employed the fangs and talons of fury that we at the shop knew well to avoid at all costs. 

City police were called.  TV station was called.  Warnings were made about medical bills, a lawyer and litigation.  Postmaster said no more cat in the post office or on the property.  Shop cat moved away.  Things went back to the less warm and fuzzy world we had before Shop Cat made people happy....  The world before she fully reciprocated her feelings with one person that pissed her off a whole lot. 

It's funny now., but it wasn't at the time.

[siabeid]

That's odd. I ordered a couple of things from them on Monday and it arrived in my mailbox today.

Simon Abeid
Kettle Falls, WA

[Moparnut72]

Just before Christmas I ordered a part I needed for the Yamaha I was rebuilding. It was coming from Virginia. After several days I checked tracking to see where it was. Turns out that it bounced back and forth between a couple of sectional centers in Virginia before it finally got on the road. It then had a couple of days layover in Utah. Then it wound up in Stockton where it sat for just about 10 days. I checked with my local post office but they couldn't find out anymore than I could. We finally got the postmistress to go up a rung in the pecking order and if finally got delivered. The whole process took just about three weeks. The reason. My physical address was first on the label and the PO Box was second where I get my mail. The computer didn't recognise my physical address as a valid address so it kicked it off to the side where it sat until the postmistress rattled a couple of cages to get a live body to do something. Sheesh.
kk

[GeorgiaGuzzi]

Oh man, I feel your pain. I ordered catch can, new air filter, and dry filter cover from amazon. The filter cover should be showing up today. The catch can and filter are were just updated to show delivery on April 18. They were scheduled for April 23!!! In view of certain events going on I’m waiting for my quarterly bonus before ordering the parts from MG Cycle. I’ll probably have everything by the latter part of April.

[pehayes]

I posed a non-blame question to MG Cycle regarding the delay.  Rick gave a full-throated reply including all the details of the nearby USPS variations and the Postal Service use of cago 'space available' on commercial airplanes.  He surmises that the sudden drop in commercial air traffic is really hitting the USPS quite hard.  Took him a long time to write all that explanation.  What a great agency to deal with.  I'll post when the bits finally arrived.  I did another small package one week earlier.  Two days from them to me in California.

Patrick Hayes
Fremont CA