Postal Savings or Additional Cost?

Recently I happened to be home while my postal delivery person parked their truck and began to walk around the block delivering mail (actually a couple of blocks). I asked her) why she was walking so much of the route and she informed me that in at least her office, the delivery people were required to park and walk a substantial part of their route. I checked on the rate of pay for postal workers (delivery) and it ranges from $13.38 for a postal worker with less than one year of experience to as much as $25.00 per hour for one with 20 years of experience. Even if we look at an average of around $18.00 to $20.00 per hour you might wonder if we are saving money by having such workers walk much of their route.

Walking the route, even part of it will likely take more time than driving a larger portion of the route, but there is more fuel used. It is likely to give the worker a great deal more exercise to walk, but it does place them more into potentially harmful rays from the sun. It probably would make a significant difference if the postal truck is turned completely off or left running as they travel the route and fuel prices are on the rise.

It still seems that it may be more costly to pay for salary and save on fuel. I would hope that the post office did some study to validate the value of walking as a cost savings. I have thought about following the postal worker around all day and recording every delivery, stop and distance, then I thought about needing to get permission because I would not want to get accused of "stalking" the postal worker. I also thought about asking my postal worker to wear a pedometer to get me some data, but I think she would not want to be singled out for this project. While I like the idea of "savings", it seems like some things we do may need to be looked at in more detail and this could be one of them.

At one time I actually was a postal delivery person and I remember how much harder the job was than I had expected and that the summer heat made it much more unpleasant. Fortunately, I was only hired part time for the summer, but found that after a few days in the heat I began to develop rashes that made walking difficult. Well, for now I will just have to wonder, but be glad my postal delivery person is so diligent.