Paper !!!!!!

[ski or die]

Unfortunately some people did and do continue to cry. Funny thing is even now they will not retire. They (the criers) are well taken care of here.

Didn't Tom say there was no crying in --- delivery?

 

[hellfire]

Paper sucked when it rained and on hot days when i dripped sweat all over it and had a hard time writing in the water... Funny thing tho, never had a late air, ever, alot of 10:29's ,,sometimes 5 or 6 in a row...........

 

[hellfire]

The job is rough, allways been, however, the disconnect and distrust between corporate and hourly is at a all time high, My opinion is its a horrible place now compared to 15 plus yrs ago. no sense of family, everyone angry and paranoid , rampant micro-management

 

[Mugarolla]

Paper sucked when it rained and on hot days when i dripped sweat all over it and had a hard time writing in the water... Funny thing tho, never had a late air, ever, alot of 10:29's ,,sometimes 5 or 6 in a row...........

Never sheeted outside the truck or business when it rained.

In fact, I never walked and wrote numbers at the same time.

I either wrote them down before I left the truck or waited until I got to the office/dock/front porch whether it was raining or not.

If it was raining, clip board was upside down, in between packages or inside my jacket. Never got wet.

 

[IVE GOTTA PACKAGE 4U]

Never sheeted outside the truck or business when it rained.

In fact, I never walked and wrote numbers at the same time.

I either wrote them down before I left the truck or waited until I got to the office/dock/front porch whether it was raining or not.

If it was raining, clip board was upside down, in between packages or inside my jacket. Never got wet.

Packages on the dashboard and bulkhead wide open.

 

[Mugarolla]

Packages on the dashboard and bulkhead wide open.

Many a day I had to stop and retrieve packages that had fallen out of the truck on a left hand turn.

Either slid off the dash, cab floor or through the open bulkhead door right out the passenger side door.

Whoops!

 

[IVE GOTTA PACKAGE 4U]

Many a day I had to stop and retrieve packages that had fallen out of the truck on a left hand turn.

Either slid off the dash, cab floor or through the open bulkhead door right out the passenger side door.

Whoops!

That did happen from time to time..

 

[oldngray]

That did happen from time to time..

Strong gust of wind too.

 

[Rainman]

Many a day I had to stop and retrieve packages that had fallen out of the truck on a left hand turn.

Either slid off the dash, cab floor or through the open bulkhead door right out the passenger side door.

Whoops!

Embarrassing when I had to deliver packages with tire tracks on them. Good thing it didn't happen too often.

Jam the bulkhead door lock so you could just pull on the chain.

 

[Foamer Pyle]

Yes, I remember the good old paper days, ripping off the overnight, and second day air tags.

 

[oldupsman]

Harriet Carter!!!

In 1978 I was given the first P-1000 any of us had ever seen. I had a route in an industrial park.
My first stop of the day was, yes, you guessed it, Harriet Carter. I delivered all the returns in the
morning and it was a trailer pickup in the afternoon.

 

[oldupsman]

I was delivering and picking up a thousand packages a day on my first route thirty-two years ago. This job is a lot easier today.

Damn Scratch, when are you getting out.

 

[oldupsman]

This.

I actually preferred the rural routes, because once you learned the way the mail carrier ran it, it was really rather easy. After that, it was only a matter of asking around for the lanes with 4 or 5 houses and the mailboxes at the end.

Me too. But I also had some small villages where he mail didn't get delivered. Everybody came to the post
office to get their mail. So once I learned where people lived I created this little book to remind me where
people lived. Carried it with me all the time. For example, the book would say, John Kennedy, Oak St., 3rd
house from the corner, blue with white trim. Always gave it to the guy who did my trip when I was on vacation.

 

[toonertoo]

I would take the wet paper, frozen pens, trucks with wooden shelves and door, keys, no technology, no communication, over the present.

 

[oldupsman]

And they hung a paper at the back of the truck and made hash marks for your stop count. They'd/we'd ride them about being accurate - and they were remarkably accurate considering that they were reading and loading 2 or 3 trucks.

Days that they were buried though, you would come in and they would have lost track of your count. I think that's why older drivers have an uncanny ability to look at their truck and just know how long their day will be.

Blue cards....

I used to scare myself sometimes. It be peak and the loader just got buried and he lose track of his stop count.
He used to ask me how many stops were on the car. I'd say 170. And I'd be within 5 stops.
Yes, you non-believers, we were that good.

 

[toonertoo]

Our rural route guys still do this without a problem.

Question for you older guys. Back in the day when it wasn't automated, how did preloaders know what to put in your cars? Were they just trained to know the areas and grabbed them off the belt?

I find this thread fascinating.

Alpha charts aka load charts. All street were listed alphabetically on the big green and white computer paper and were hung on the back of the trucks. and the trucks were set up by dol (delivery order listing) which actually had input from the drivers. You basically had to know what you got for each truck, and you would yank it off get a sequence number and load it. Load diagrams were also on the backs of the trucks that would tell you where to load it based on the sequence number from the alpha charts, and bulk stops stayed the same every day.

 

[toonertoo]

I used to scare myself sometimes. It be peak and the loader just got buried and he lose track of his stop count.
He used to ask me how many stops were on the car. I'd say 170. And I'd be within 5 stops.
Yes, you non-believers, we were that good.

we had clickers for a while

 

[toonertoo]

I used to scare myself sometimes. It be peak and the loader just got buried and he lose track of his stop count.
He used to ask me how many stops were on the car. I'd say 170. And I'd be within 5 stops.
Yes, you non-believers, we were that good.

One driver told me "no way is there 150 stops in here" , there was.....But yes usually an old timer could tell you how long of a day he would have.

 

[oldupsman]

Mostly, the job has changed a lot. Thirty+ years ago, it was physically challenging with the older trucks and the loads were still heavy. But, once a driver left the building, he/she was in charge of the day and was expected to make decisions independently. There was no micro-management. The only way they could contact us was by leaving messages at our pickup stops. For those of us on rural routes, pickups might not even be started until 4:00 or 5:00 in the afternoon.

Conversely, we had no easy way to contact the building with problems. There were a number of times I had to walk quite a way to a house and ask if I could use the phone.

Almost comparing apples to oranges.

I ran rural routes almost my whole career too.
I ate lunch at the same little deli in the middle of nowhere for years. I gave the center the phone number of the deli in case they had to get ahold
of me they could. They actually wanted me to stop and have lunch. It was the only way to get ahold of me.

 

[Covemastah]

Yes, I remember the good old paper days, ripping off the overnight, and second day air tags.

Yeah ,,, then they added that. Pain in the arse. Consignee billing label!!!!