Reminiscence Of A Mail Carrier

Views from the backroom of the Millis post office.

These pics show a calm, clean and organized work area but don't be fooled, come 8AM on any given morning this room is complete chaos. Racks, dollies and pallets loaded with mail, magazines and packages all being sorted with mail clerks scurrying and mail carriers sorting and casing mail.

This first pic is the "case" for route 7, the route I primarily did for the last several months of my tenure -

Here is the case for route 10, which is referred to as the auxiliary route.  Meaning it's the smallest route in the Millis PO, spans two towns; Millis and Norfolk, and made up of odd stops. I learned on this route, spending most of my early months on it -

Although, not labeled, below is the case for route 8.  This is the route I was mentored on and learned on when starting out as a mail carrier, and would often fill in on when the regular carrier was out.  Of the three routes I did, this was the largest with the most stops and typically up there as one of the routes that has the most packages per day.  It was also the most challenging of routes because of it's size, number of stops and the convoluted house numbering order - 

The orange bins, which are older and used mostly by the "rural" carriers, are known as "pumpkins" and where the clerks place the packages for each route. Most mornings these bins are usually full, overflowing actually, with packages stacked along side them -

The blue bins below are the new "pumpkins". These are used by the "city" carriers.  The flat wooden cart, of which there are many, are used by the carriers to bring the trayed, sorted mail out to the LLV mail trucks for loading -

The unofficial USPS mail carriers creed -

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."