Rural Mail Delivery

[WoolyBear]

Rural Mail Delivery Under Review in Canada
After cutting off rural mail delivery in some Maritimes areas, Canada Post is reviewing its entire system of rural mail delivery, according to CNEWS. Canada Post says it has had hundreds of complaints from its postal drivers about poor roads and about the risk of repetitive strain injury when the drivers reach from their cars to put mail into rural mail boxes. What really irks rural residents is that mail delivery was cut off with little notice and no consultation. Canada Post says rural delivery may be resumed to those routes that were cut off if customers can adjust their mail boxes to make them "acceptable." Of course, because Canada Post is in the process of investigating the safety of rural routes, they don't actually have a definition of a "safe" rural mailbox right now. There doesn't seem to be anything in the works for making the roads safer too. It's not much consolation for seniors and others who have difficulty getting 20 kilometres or more down the road to pick up their mail in town.

THEN I would only assume that the end is near for urban mail delivery. Not until the drug dealers, muggers and "cracked" sidewalks are eliminated, it only seems fair that we make every urban resident walk to the corner store or drive to the central mail depot to pickup their mail. I mean REALLY we can't risk the mail delivery person can we? Just think of the raises the CEO and his crownies can get when they do this!!!!!

[wilagro]

Our rural delivery was stopped twenty years ago. A nearby community still has their's...three times a week no less. The whole rural mail thing is a mess. I wouldn't be surprised to see ALL rural delivery abandoned and those stupid community boxes (arranged for easy breakins) will be the norm.

"repetitive strain injury" --- sore muscles from doing some work. What a joke that is. How do these delivery people expect to get the mail into the boxes anyway? Bunch of whiners who want more money for less work.

Talk to your MP and see what he/she says...couldn't hurt.

[WoolyBear]

Our area has never had rural delivery. Our address is currently under review because our numbers have dropped below 50 customers.

It doesn't seem to matter to the urban authorities that look after our services that rural folk won't have convenient services like post offices, and hospitals as close by as they once were. Our local hospital (15 miles away) no longer has emergency services, the nearest emergency is nearly 50 miles away in the opposite direction.

God forbid that the city voters should have to be further than 10 minutes from a hospital, walking distance from a school or more than a stone's throw from a convience store.

[coppertop]

welcome to rural living, where we are in fact second class. Kids get on school busses at 6:30 AM, our mail delivery is a joke etc.
I have never chosen to get my mail in the box a mile down the road, I pick it up in town whenever I pass through.

[grassfarmer]

It was a shock coming from 6 days a week delivery to three days a week when I moved to Canada - both to mail boxes at the end of the farm road. But I can live with it - mail is largely being superceded by electronic communication anyway, certainly as far as business is concerned. Never have I seen a country with so much waste of paper in the form of junk mail - maybe if they reduce the mail service further this wastage could be reduced.

ps Don't know if my mail lady drives her route backwards but the mailboxes are on the wrong side of her truck so she gets out and walks around to post the letters?

[cakadu]

You bring up a good point, grassfarmer, we get so much junk mail in the form of flyers, leaflets etc. I don't mind the local papers that get delivered (if I can find the time to read them), but please - leave out all those flyers etc. from the stores. If they didn't include those, then maybe there wouldn't be so much strain on the delivery people.

Actually, when you think about it, they have to put in a tender to get the routes, so how much money can they be making with fuel hovering around $1/litre?

[wilb]

How many farm people (not rural people) actually get mail delivery? Where I live, everyone has to pick up their mail in town. None of my several hundred customers or any of my relatives get mail delivered to their home. Is this an Eastern Canadian thing or for people close to major cities? Until a few years ago, we had to PAY TO RENT a post office box in town which really annoyed me when city people got thier mail delivered to their house for free!

[coppertop]

I pay approximately $110 per year for my mail box in town because I can get rural delivery and am not using it.

[cowman]

Linda: Not sure about your situation but in my area they scrapped the tender thing and went with postal employees? Apparently the union pressured Canada post to change the system?
And I would expect the union then started all this garbage about safety etc.? Fairly typical when you get the public beuracracy involved in something that worked very well?

[coppertop]

My understanding from listening to a program aired by Rutherford recently is that all carriers are now employees of Canada Post, so they will all be required to tow the line !!