HELPING THE POSTMAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 33, 9 February 1939, Page 9

HELPING THE POSTMAN

ON HOUSE-TO-HOUSE DELIVERIES How delivery of correspondence to private residences can be speeded up and the postman greatly helped was described by a writer in one of the southern newspapers. The postman he stated, opened his gate, walked eleven yards to the door, delivered the mail, walked eleven yards back and closed the gate. “Twenty-two yards in one day,'’ said the correspondent, “means one mile in eighty days or 4A miles in one year. Now he goes through the same performance at hundreds of other houses; he therefore walks in the year unnecessary hundreds of miles.” Having worked out the postman's effort in this way, the correspondent nailed a letter-box inside his front gate just as the postman came along. “His sunny smile of appreciation paid him for doing it,’’ concluded the writer, who was, in his own way, dealing with a problem which gives constant concern to the Post Oliice - that of unnecesary extension of delivery routes through the distances to be travelled inside the front gates. The Post Office is fortified by regulations empowering it to refuse delivery more than a reasonable distance from the road, “reasonable distance” being subject to reasonable interpretation; and another regulation enabling it to refuse to extend a delivery to a new house unless a gate letter-box is provided. Where deliveries have to be made in lofty buildings, the postman is helped by a regulation that letters need not be delivered above the first floor unicss a lift is provided. Most concerns meet this reasonable requirement by providing locked letter-boxes on the ground floor for all tenants.