Out for delivery in Scappoose: At work with a rural mail carrier

Have you ever wondered what a day at work is like for the people who fill up your mailbox? We delivered on a listener suggestion for the latest installment of our At Work With series, and spent the day with a rural letter carrier.

Connie Gunn has been a mail carrier out of Scappoose, Oregon, for 21 years. She originally applied to work at the United States Postal Service (USPS) in 2001 after she separated from the military as a combat medic and a radio operator in the Coast Guard. She had to apply for a job — any job — to keep her unemployment checks coming, and she didn’t study for the postal exam — not even knowing if she wanted the job. But she got it, and over two decades later, she’s a veteran carrier who also serves as a union steward and trains new carriers.

“When you first start, you’re a rural carrier associate [RCA], and you can work anywhere from four to 10 days a month,” said Gunn.

She worked every Saturday for 11 years as an RCA, but had to wait until someone retired to become a “career” with full-time hours. Ten years ago she bid for the first route that opened — Rural Route #2, which covers a long stretch of the Scappoose-Vernonia Highway. It was her least favorite route as a RCA. Previously, she " stayed away from it like the plague,” because “it was too far out. At the time, I had a Columbia River Highway/in-town route, and so I thought that was just easier. ”But she said she was ready “to go full-time, no matter what route I got. So, I was going to take anything.”

After 10 years, Gunn has gotten to know many of the 724 customers on her route. She’s become friends with many people she delivers to and has watched their kids — and their dogs — grow up. OPB “Weekend Edition Host” Lillian Karabaic spent a day with her, asking your burning questions.

When you have a work-stress dream, what goes wrong in your dream?

“I don’t deliver the mail. I load up, and I go home, and I go to bed. And I wake up at 8 o’clock at night and forget that I didn’t go and deliver. “(That’s never actually happened to Connie Gunn, to be clear.)

Is there air conditioning in the mail truck vehicle?

No. The postal vehicles Gunn drives are called LLVs — or Long Life Vehicles. Many of them are more than 30 years old.

“The LLVs are 20 degrees hotter inside than it is outside. And so ... when it’s 80 degrees outside, it’s about a hundred in our vehicles,” said Gunn. “It’s a little microwave oven in there.”

How do you stay cool without air conditioning?

“Usually, I just use frozen washcloths,” said Gunn. “I put ‘em in a cooler and bring that with me.” But if it gets dire, Gunn has a secret: One of her customers has a generous standing offer for her, “I have a swimming pool to jump into halfway through my route if I need it,” she said. How does she get into the pool? “I only take off my shoes, fully clothed in the swimming pool. That’s it. And they have a towel waiting for me. It’s great.”

Do you get to know and connect with the residents whose mail you deliver?

“Yes, of course I do. Yes, I do. After knowing them and being their regular carrier for 10 years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people over the years and consider them friends.”

What’s the hardest part of being a mail carrier?

“Sometimes it’s the time,” said Gunn, who has had stretches where she works six days a week “It’s the time that it takes to do your job, hoping that you’ll get off in time to be with friends and family or an event. I think that can be overwhelming and stressful … besides the weather, the weather’s always stressful.”

Speaking of which, have you ever been in a situation that exemplifies the informal creed of the U.S. Postal Service: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds”?

“Snow? Yes, snow. When the fires happened, the post office was still working six days a week, seven days a week because we deliver Amazon on Sundays … The fires were pretty bad a few years back,” said Gunn. And delivering in the snow and ice is always tough on her long and hilly route. “It’s about 1,600 feet going all the way up to Pisgah Home [Road],” said Gunn. “If I go all the way to the top to Grouse Lane, I have 76 different streets on my route. So my route’s around 46 to 50 miles every day.”

What podcasts/music do you listen to during your shift?

For safety reasons, they are not allowed to listen to headphones while driving, and the speakers die really quickly in the trucks. But when she can, Gunn listens to a lot of audiobooks.

What’s your favorite season to deliver?

Spring. And fall. “Because we’re kind of out of snow, and we’re kind of out of hot, and we’re just kind of nice. I mean, 68 to 73 is perfect to me,” said Gunn.

What title do you identify with the most — mail carrier, letter carrier, postal worker, mailwoman?

“Probably rural carrier.”

What does the beginning of your day look like for you?

Gunn has to clock in at 7:30 a.m., and then start sorting and loading her mail. “A lot of people think that it’s already sitting here, ready for us in our vehicles, and we don’t have to do anything,” she said. “No … there’s a lot more to it.”

And there is a lot to sort! Gunn stands in a small cubicle, called a “case” by postal workers. Her case is exclusively for her route, and is decorated with mail-themed gifts from her customers. There are post-it notes from her usual RCA, who covers Rural Route #2 during Saturdays and Gunn’s days off. She starts organizing every single piece of mail in her 724-address route. There are labels for every customer, which she reprints when people move on or off her route, or a new building is added.

“I start with flats, which are considered magazines,” said Gunn. “And then I take my “chucks” or what you guys consider small parcels. I put those into my case. Then I pull it all down, and then I’m ready to go out on the street.”

On this Wednesday, she moves quickly, almost like a ballerina, glancing at each letter, and pivoting to the exact spot in the cubby where it gets slotted in. She knows her route, but there is a lot to cover. She says it usually takes a week for an RCA to learn the route but months to really get into the swing of things.

“It is a lot of sequencing. A lot of memorization,” said Gunn.

Once she’s organized today’s 36 inches of letters — the mail volume is measured in feet — it’s time for the packages. She scans every package and a scanner beeps and tells her which section it should go in and organizes it in delivery order. That scan is what triggers the “Your package is out for delivery” update emails we all anxiously wait for.

After Gunn organizes her mail, it’s time to load it all into a “pumpkin” — that’s the nickname for a large orange rolling cart — to get it to the loading bay.

On an average day, it takes her about a little over an hour to sort all her mail and load it into the back of her truck. She likes to be out by 9 a.m. If she is slow getting ready, she has to wait for a loading bay to be available.

What are the worst things to deliver?

Dog food and kitty litter are the heaviest.

How many packages do you deliver per day?

During the pandemic, package deliveries went way up. About one-third of her 724-customer route gets one on a given day, said Gunn, because “Amazon doesn’t deliver on my route very much, because there’s no cell service up there.” There are a few Amazon drivers, but she said, “They’re like unicorns. They’re kind of exclusive, elusive. They’re out there somewhere.”

Gunn said Amazon tried to deliver on her route, but the drivers kept getting lost and would ask her for help.

Do you find that you get engaged in conversations or asked about social issues, such as ballot measures?

“No, not really. I think they know that we’re supposed to be neutral and stay away from [politics],” said Gunn.

What do carriers do when they need to use a bathroom on their route?

“Crown Zellerbach has a port-a-potty,” said Gunn. “It’s a little upgrade on a port-a-potty. As port-a-potties pop up on my route, I take note of them, like, ‘There’s one! There’s one!’”

She also has many customers who let her use their bathrooms. So she keeps a mental inventory based on where she is on her route.

How many hours per week do you work?

Rural Route #2 is rated at 64 hours per week by USPS. If her RCA leaves, it can take months to hire a new one and then Gunn has to work her route every day. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gunn had a nine-month stretch where she had no Saturday relief and worked six days a week. “There was sometimes we worked until 9, 10 o’clock at night,” said Gunn. How did she recover on her day off? “Trying not to think about Monday.”

Everyone in USPS works overtime during the holiday delivery season. “It’s our prime time,” said Gunn.

Right now, she has an RCA and is working shorter weeks, so she can spend more time with her grandchildren. Because of the higher turnover in RCAs, she wants to get more time off “while it lasts.”

Generally, “It’s fun. It can be fun,” said Gunn.

But, “When there’s a national crisis or something’s going on — yeah, the job is hard during those times, that’s for sure,” she said.

Do you have to wear a uniform as a rural carrier?

No, because the USPS doesn’t provide a uniform stipend to rural carriers. “They can’t dictate what they don’t pay for,” said Gunn. But she still wears postal-inspired shirts about three days a week, she said, “because I’m proud to be a worker.” And, she said it makes it easier to decide what to wear.

But a lot of the shirts are joking “I have one that says: Monday: deliver mail, Tuesday: deliver mail, and then it gets to Saturday and says, Saturday: maybe deliver mail?”

What’s your favorite holiday gift to get?

They aren’t allowed to get cash.

“Probably a treat that I wouldn’t get normally for myself,” said Gunn. But she’s so busy during the holidays, “sometimes I share them with my family, like ‘here’s a gift card, because I don’t have time to shop during Christmas, but my postal customer gave me one,’” said Gunn.

One customer bakes for her. “She makes me goodies every holiday. It doesn’t matter what holiday,” she said.

What’s the best part of being a rural carrier?

”I think it’s the freedom of being my own person or being in control of my own self and being out in the nature all day is amazing.” said Gunn. “If there’s not a lot of clouds, you’ll see Mount Hood, Mount St. Helens, Mount Adams. I mean, the views from my route are beautiful.”