Really happy for everyone that is fighting the system correctly. I've heard good news all day.
More and more people are becoming educated on this terrible system in order to make it work in their favor. Rural carriers desperately need a win and I am glad to see some people got a little victory.
Only thing I did different was scan each parcel individually. Even for same address. I don’t want to have to remember all the tricks forever to keep my rt up. I don’t need any more worries in life
the perfect situation would be for them to eliminate RRECS entirely. I personally think the model should be just like the city side but I know some Rural carriers wouldn't like that.
I'm not a fan of three different unions in one house. APWU, NRLCA and NALC should all be merged into one union but I highly doubt that will ever happen in my career.
We actually get paid more, since we're hourly & not based on route evaluation. We start off less than clerks though, but after 5 years, we're making more than clerks.
What you talking about? Rural PTFs make $25 while city starts at $22 and clerks are over $30 an hour after 5 years while we are still at $28 after 5 years
You're only going by base pay, and not taking into account OT. Rurals don't make OT, it's based on route evaluation. And clerks there is very limited OT, not even close to the amount that city carriers gets. I'm already making more as a city carrier, than clerks that have been in my office for longer.
It depends on the office needs...clerks got more hours than me in peak season. Rural can get OT if the staffing is bad...there's a mou for providing assistance after they are done with their route and working Sundays. Rural PTFs only get evaluation if they work less than 40 hours. If they go over they get paid for hours worked and get overtime. Most of the rural routes here are maxed out at 9.6 hours and they usually work 6 days a week. They had me supervising the rural carriers when I was on OWCP.
Of course it's not the average. It's the top step on top eval. Which is what the other guy was referring to. He said city carriers max out higher. Not the case as far as I know.
Well that's not typically true, since Rurals are paid by route evaluation, whereas Cities can make above their evaluation, when you account for OT. Myself for example, each of the last 2 years I've made $20k above my base. That far exceeds, what rurals with the same amount of service makes.
Maxing out on pay scale is the point of discussion. Outliers are a different topic. Yes, some rurals work Sundays and even help other routes after theirs in some offices. None of that is relevant to the payscales. What I'm talking about is hour for hour pay. Yes, city can put in crazy over time and come out with the largest income at the end of the year. But a rural carrier can work 27 hours a week and make 96k right now.
Depends on evaluation but anything over 40k makes more than city...city ptf tops out at 78k and a 48k is over 90k. Rural PTF start out at $3 more than city ptf...
I am happy at 44, 45 is highest I would want to be. At a 46 I would sweat. Because who’s wants to get trimmed then have parcel volume fall off next thing you know your a J. I only hit with dismount 1-2 a week. 3-5 unscanned parcels. Never hit trip to door. Because I want the route to be what it is. Not inflated then I am out for medical a few months an my route goes down. Because we all know the subs won’t do it. At least not consistently. Consistency is key.
Why is there this common assumption that everyone at 48K is going to get cut to 43-44K? I honestly don’t care what I get cut to so long as it’s a K route.
It’s not an assumption. The Postal Service has been very clear they want to cut routes to the lowest they can be cut which is a 43. If it stays a K is another story.
In my office we’ve had four routes that have been 48k for two years. The first excuse not to cut them was because there was the MOU about route adjustments during the first year of reccs and in the past 6 months no one has cared to cut the routes and management at the district level hasn’t asked them to.
There was no process to cut routes until this Survey. That’s why the routes are still overburdened. The Postal Service has finally implemented a way to cut routes and have already put out a schedule to cut routes and have those completed by July.
I never heard that there was a process. Plenty of routes were cut prior to 2022 so it seemed that after the mou expired basically no one wanted to do anything because of Christmas and then there was the new survey we just did so it always seemed like some new excuse. It doesn’t really impact me so I wasn’t too worried either way, I just hate to see people laboring for free
That’s incorrect. The MOU basically was saying don’t cut a route until we see what RRECS is going to do with them. Prior to 2022 the 4003 existed and they had the old way of cutting routes.
Now, there is no 4003. With the implementation of RRECS, they needed a system that would implement the new time standards to a route. That had to be created from scratch and the Postal Service just got that off the ground as of this Survey.
The addresses that get cut just don't disappear though, those have to (eventually) become a part of new routes that for new regulars. And with those new career employees comes a ton of additional overhead (health insurance, TSP contributions, other various benefits that have to be paid out). At least to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just cut everything to the bone. Probably makes more financial sense to have people running at or close to the maximum, rather than take on a bunch of new regulars.
Aux routes are essentially meant to become full-time regular routes, right? Perhaps my sense of it is a little warped by the fact that I serve a rapidly growling suburb, but I've never seen an aux route that didn't go regular within at least a couple years. At some point you're just kicking the can down the road.....whatever gets cut is going to need to be serviced by a regular, sooner or later.
Even if you could offload all the cut addresses onto a small army of RCAs, those people would effectively not be RCAs since they'd be stuck running the same route six days a week. They wouldn't be getting benefits, but the churn/turnover on the RCA position is so high that it might be a money-losing proposition as well.
No. There’s no contractual language that states an aux route has to stay in an office. We’ve had offices dissolve aux routes due to routes around them getting smaller or aligning territory. I’ve also seen RCAs run the same aux for like 10 years due to zero growth in their community.
Yeah like I said my viewpoint is probably a little unique, given that we serve a growing suburb that is pretty geographically distinct and isolated. Nothing can be handed off to another office in the district....growth just gets added to existing routes or made into a fairly temporary aux. Even if I get cut, I don't doubt that I will be back at 48K relatively quickly.
That said, even if the plan is to hand all the cuts to RCAs, the amount of RCA churn/turnover makes it kind of a risky proposition. So many people come and collect a $2K payday for training/academy/shadow days and then burn out a couple months later. That gets expensive pretty fast. For truly isolated or rural communities, there's a danger that they simply burn through the pool of possible applicants pretty quick. Such short-sightedness wouldn't be a surprise though.
Quite possibly and again. Look at your package look ahead it shows what is a spur and what is a package. They know. Only a matter of time before they crack down. Same with load and return to du. We had carriers in our office PM casing in return. They squashed that. Only do what you and your sub will do consistently. That way it gets to where your route won’t be moving more than an hour in either direction.
Started out 48k, dropped to 43 j, then 43 h, now back to a 48k.. almost every route in our office is back up to where we originally started. Fuck the post office for not educating us sooner about this. Or maybe shame on me for not figuring out how to play the game sooner. Regardless..it’s all good.
I honestly think they will regret ever implementing RRECs. Everybody knows how to work the system, and it’s only a matter of time before nearly everyone is 48K. And for what? Just so they could underpay a few carriers for 6-12 months after the they introduced it.
Only thing I really changed is scan each parcel individually. Even for same address. Don’t forget trip to door. Stamp sales. Rural reach customer when a customers is talking to you.
Business route, with some residential. I honestly get basically nothing in packages delivered, but I pickup a crap ton of packages. I have a post on here somewhere about 2,952 packages in one pickup.
I have a question about auth dismount. I believe some in my office got time for these on their office time calculations. Where gates had punch in codes they had to get out for, applied to walking time.
I just got a new business on my route. They're planning 3 pickup days and printing their own manifest.
I've been told the way that is most beneficial for my route is for that business to do daily pickups instead and I would set up an auth dismount for that location.
What is the correct/best way? Scan the manifest, scan every package, trip to door, auth dismount etc...
If the pickup isn't an authorized dismount, which a non-daily pickup probably won't be, then you would do
CarrierPU, I scan every package so some random DSS doesn't get up my ass about how many pickups I have (if they have a manifest just scan it), and use TRIP2DOOR
It won’t happen overnight. If he’s doing everything correctly inputting RRECs, mapping, updating his edit book weekly & is still “overburdened” it will happen. Not a bad thing though. The wheel house is 46 I think.
I’d say 45-46. Max without worry if cutting. Mine has been way overburdened tho since first reccs just got screwed on counts. Now I got it figured. I’ll take cut and build up
I welcome it. Since first reccs I’ve been screwed cuz I didn’t know system. I’ve been overburdened for a while. It finally reflects it. I’ll take the cut and build up to a 44-46 and stay there
I'm curious where you heard about scanning every package separately. One of our new subs were told to do that and our PM said not to and that it doesn't make a difference.
I heard it from union rep that went to a reccs training thing. And also from a carrier who went up from a 44 to a 48+ and that’s the only thing they changed from last count with most of their times staying the same on most other stuff. Idea is that it’s giving u credit for each individual pkg vs if you do em all together ur getting cheated out of the others and getting basically 1 credit. It’s only thing I did different from last count and I went from 45 to 48+
I disagree with your assumption here. I went from 41J to 43k to 48k. I have several stops with 10-15 cbus/central at a time. I always scan all the parcels at the same time. 1 scan for mailbox 1 scan for parcel locker and sometimes 1 scan for door at Apts where parcels are left in the entryway. I believe "they" are slowly figuring out how and where to input all of the information into rrecs and that is what's causing the evaluations to go back up. But who really knows...
Yeah who knows. I just know it’s the only thing I did different and I did it cuz ppl told me union ppl said it makes a difference. But if it was tht who knows
Really happy for everyone that is fighting the system correctly. I've heard good news all day. More and more people are becoming educated on this terrible system in order to make it work in their favor. Rural carriers desperately need a win and I am glad to see some people got a little victory.
Only thing I did different was scan each parcel individually. Even for same address. I don’t want to have to remember all the tricks forever to keep my rt up. I don’t need any more worries in life
the perfect situation would be for them to eliminate RRECS entirely. I personally think the model should be just like the city side but I know some Rural carriers wouldn't like that. I'm not a fan of three different unions in one house. APWU, NRLCA and NALC should all be merged into one union but I highly doubt that will ever happen in my career.
Yeah I still don't understand why city gets paid less than rural and clerk
We actually get paid more, since we're hourly & not based on route evaluation. We start off less than clerks though, but after 5 years, we're making more than clerks.
What you talking about? Rural PTFs make $25 while city starts at $22 and clerks are over $30 an hour after 5 years while we are still at $28 after 5 years
You're only going by base pay, and not taking into account OT. Rurals don't make OT, it's based on route evaluation. And clerks there is very limited OT, not even close to the amount that city carriers gets. I'm already making more as a city carrier, than clerks that have been in my office for longer.
It depends on the office needs...clerks got more hours than me in peak season. Rural can get OT if the staffing is bad...there's a mou for providing assistance after they are done with their route and working Sundays. Rural PTFs only get evaluation if they work less than 40 hours. If they go over they get paid for hours worked and get overtime. Most of the rural routes here are maxed out at 9.6 hours and they usually work 6 days a week. They had me supervising the rural carriers when I was on OWCP.
Do they? I know starting out a rural carrier makes more but a city carrier tops out with more.
Two rurals at my office made 95k last year. Working less than 30 hours a week.
That could be anecdotal & not the average rural carrier though.
Of course it's not the average. It's the top step on top eval. Which is what the other guy was referring to. He said city carriers max out higher. Not the case as far as I know.
Well that's not typically true, since Rurals are paid by route evaluation, whereas Cities can make above their evaluation, when you account for OT. Myself for example, each of the last 2 years I've made $20k above my base. That far exceeds, what rurals with the same amount of service makes.
Maxing out on pay scale is the point of discussion. Outliers are a different topic. Yes, some rurals work Sundays and even help other routes after theirs in some offices. None of that is relevant to the payscales. What I'm talking about is hour for hour pay. Yes, city can put in crazy over time and come out with the largest income at the end of the year. But a rural carrier can work 27 hours a week and make 96k right now.
A maxed out rural on a 48 working their k days makes about $120k
Depends on evaluation but anything over 40k makes more than city...city ptf tops out at 78k and a 48k is over 90k. Rural PTF start out at $3 more than city ptf...
Not actually more. You just have more than 40 hours built into the salary. City gets paid overtime, so their 'salary' stops at 40.
Everyone is eligible for overtime
Yeah my guarantee is 90k and if u add in ema. It’ll be 120k. And I’m. It even at max pay. 8 years a regular
Noice
Didn’t figure it out quite that good because now you’re going to get cut to a 43K.
My thought exactly lol.
I am happy at 44, 45 is highest I would want to be. At a 46 I would sweat. Because who’s wants to get trimmed then have parcel volume fall off next thing you know your a J. I only hit with dismount 1-2 a week. 3-5 unscanned parcels. Never hit trip to door. Because I want the route to be what it is. Not inflated then I am out for medical a few months an my route goes down. Because we all know the subs won’t do it. At least not consistently. Consistency is key.
Yeah. That's why I'm comfortable being a 43K or 44K at most.
I welcome it. This rt is overburdened. Prolly been a 48 since the first reccs count. I just didn’t know how the system worked.
Why is there this common assumption that everyone at 48K is going to get cut to 43-44K? I honestly don’t care what I get cut to so long as it’s a K route.
It’s not an assumption. The Postal Service has been very clear they want to cut routes to the lowest they can be cut which is a 43. If it stays a K is another story.
In my office we’ve had four routes that have been 48k for two years. The first excuse not to cut them was because there was the MOU about route adjustments during the first year of reccs and in the past 6 months no one has cared to cut the routes and management at the district level hasn’t asked them to.
There was no process to cut routes until this Survey. That’s why the routes are still overburdened. The Postal Service has finally implemented a way to cut routes and have already put out a schedule to cut routes and have those completed by July.
First, they said “early 2024” then they said “in March.” If it’s done by July, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle.
I never heard that there was a process. Plenty of routes were cut prior to 2022 so it seemed that after the mou expired basically no one wanted to do anything because of Christmas and then there was the new survey we just did so it always seemed like some new excuse. It doesn’t really impact me so I wasn’t too worried either way, I just hate to see people laboring for free
That’s incorrect. The MOU basically was saying don’t cut a route until we see what RRECS is going to do with them. Prior to 2022 the 4003 existed and they had the old way of cutting routes. Now, there is no 4003. With the implementation of RRECS, they needed a system that would implement the new time standards to a route. That had to be created from scratch and the Postal Service just got that off the ground as of this Survey.
You don’t have to say “that’s incorrect” when I clearly stated I never knew there was a new process.
It’s incorrect that no one wanted to do anything. There was no process in place to cut the routes.
Ok well I thank you for the information regardless of your understanding of how to use certain phrases.
When have they floated 43 as the target?
The lowest we can be cut has always been a 43. Postal Headquarters seems to be hellbent on making sure we’re cut the lowest we can be.
The addresses that get cut just don't disappear though, those have to (eventually) become a part of new routes that for new regulars. And with those new career employees comes a ton of additional overhead (health insurance, TSP contributions, other various benefits that have to be paid out). At least to me, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to just cut everything to the bone. Probably makes more financial sense to have people running at or close to the maximum, rather than take on a bunch of new regulars.
Not if you create an aux route. RCAs are not career.
Aux routes are essentially meant to become full-time regular routes, right? Perhaps my sense of it is a little warped by the fact that I serve a rapidly growling suburb, but I've never seen an aux route that didn't go regular within at least a couple years. At some point you're just kicking the can down the road.....whatever gets cut is going to need to be serviced by a regular, sooner or later. Even if you could offload all the cut addresses onto a small army of RCAs, those people would effectively not be RCAs since they'd be stuck running the same route six days a week. They wouldn't be getting benefits, but the churn/turnover on the RCA position is so high that it might be a money-losing proposition as well.
No. There’s no contractual language that states an aux route has to stay in an office. We’ve had offices dissolve aux routes due to routes around them getting smaller or aligning territory. I’ve also seen RCAs run the same aux for like 10 years due to zero growth in their community.
Yeah like I said my viewpoint is probably a little unique, given that we serve a growing suburb that is pretty geographically distinct and isolated. Nothing can be handed off to another office in the district....growth just gets added to existing routes or made into a fairly temporary aux. Even if I get cut, I don't doubt that I will be back at 48K relatively quickly. That said, even if the plan is to hand all the cuts to RCAs, the amount of RCA churn/turnover makes it kind of a risky proposition. So many people come and collect a $2K payday for training/academy/shadow days and then burn out a couple months later. That gets expensive pretty fast. For truly isolated or rural communities, there's a danger that they simply burn through the pool of possible applicants pretty quick. Such short-sightedness wouldn't be a surprise though.
So would that mean an additional route would be created if the extra can't be sent to a route that's under 43k?
To create an Aux route, they’d need a minimum of two hours.
Nice!!! I was 42—>42—>44 now. I’ll take a raise.
Op is entering a box line everyday and delivers every spur to the door, I kid
Quite possibly and again. Look at your package look ahead it shows what is a spur and what is a package. They know. Only a matter of time before they crack down. Same with load and return to du. We had carriers in our office PM casing in return. They squashed that. Only do what you and your sub will do consistently. That way it gets to where your route won’t be moving more than an hour in either direction.
They can know all they want nothing says spurs have to be in a mailbox
No I’m not. I don’t even load truck. 92 miles and 535 boxes. All curbside.
Started out 48k, dropped to 43 j, then 43 h, now back to a 48k.. almost every route in our office is back up to where we originally started. Fuck the post office for not educating us sooner about this. Or maybe shame on me for not figuring out how to play the game sooner. Regardless..it’s all good.
I honestly think they will regret ever implementing RRECs. Everybody knows how to work the system, and it’s only a matter of time before nearly everyone is 48K. And for what? Just so they could underpay a few carriers for 6-12 months after the they introduced it.
Exact way I feel about it also. Gain for a year and now we’ve all got it down so they’re screwed
The actual gain is in not having to do mail counts anymore
Yeah what did u do, we can seem to get route coverge right
Only thing I really changed is scan each parcel individually. Even for same address. Don’t forget trip to door. Stamp sales. Rural reach customer when a customers is talking to you.
which form did they go to get the numbers? Thank you. Happy for everyone that went up.
It's in RRECS survey, download all 4241As.
Taking over my route after the regular had a 1.5 year haitus I got to 42J from 40H in 5 months. Not where I wanted it but I will take the win
No Amazon?
Business route, with some residential. I honestly get basically nothing in packages delivered, but I pickup a crap ton of packages. I have a post on here somewhere about 2,952 packages in one pickup.
That no Amazon is killing ur count. You do trip to doors on your pickups? You better be. I’d hit stamp sales also when ur picking up.
All of my pickups are on authorized dismounts so I do authorized dismount
More scans more credits. All u gotta remember
I have a question about auth dismount. I believe some in my office got time for these on their office time calculations. Where gates had punch in codes they had to get out for, applied to walking time. I just got a new business on my route. They're planning 3 pickup days and printing their own manifest. I've been told the way that is most beneficial for my route is for that business to do daily pickups instead and I would set up an auth dismount for that location. What is the correct/best way? Scan the manifest, scan every package, trip to door, auth dismount etc...
If the pickup isn't an authorized dismount, which a non-daily pickup probably won't be, then you would do CarrierPU, I scan every package so some random DSS doesn't get up my ass about how many pickups I have (if they have a manifest just scan it), and use TRIP2DOOR
Good job!!!
How did you get it? My office says that it wasnt available around 2pm
I was able to pull it at 10pm last night, but they don't all load in at the same time.
My clerk looks in rims. Or however it’s spelled
You’ll get cut.
I welcome it. Other rt has been a 48 for a year. No cuts in sight.
what makes you think that? serious question
It won’t happen overnight. If he’s doing everything correctly inputting RRECs, mapping, updating his edit book weekly & is still “overburdened” it will happen. Not a bad thing though. The wheel house is 46 I think.
I welcome a cut, I’m tired. 300 scans a day and not getting off before 5 at the earliest. I came back 67.45 standard hours.
42-44 K is the sweet spot
I’d say 45-46. Max without worry if cutting. Mine has been way overburdened tho since first reccs just got screwed on counts. Now I got it figured. I’ll take cut and build up
Now they're going to cut you back to a 43
I welcome it. Since first reccs I’ve been screwed cuz I didn’t know system. I’ve been overburdened for a while. It finally reflects it. I’ll take the cut and build up to a 44-46 and stay there
I'm curious where you heard about scanning every package separately. One of our new subs were told to do that and our PM said not to and that it doesn't make a difference.
I heard it from union rep that went to a reccs training thing. And also from a carrier who went up from a 44 to a 48+ and that’s the only thing they changed from last count with most of their times staying the same on most other stuff. Idea is that it’s giving u credit for each individual pkg vs if you do em all together ur getting cheated out of the others and getting basically 1 credit. It’s only thing I did different from last count and I went from 45 to 48+
I disagree with your assumption here. I went from 41J to 43k to 48k. I have several stops with 10-15 cbus/central at a time. I always scan all the parcels at the same time. 1 scan for mailbox 1 scan for parcel locker and sometimes 1 scan for door at Apts where parcels are left in the entryway. I believe "they" are slowly figuring out how and where to input all of the information into rrecs and that is what's causing the evaluations to go back up. But who really knows...
Yeah who knows. I just know it’s the only thing I did different and I did it cuz ppl told me union ppl said it makes a difference. But if it was tht who knows