Tales from the Rural Route
Postal personnel enjoy providing the personal touch.
July/August 2008
Andy Leheny
 |
iStockphoto.com/Loretta Hostettler
|
The postal service employees of Charlotte, Iowa, know serving a rural community can be somewhat unusual.
RELATED CONTENT
Increased traffic taxes populations of amphibians and other animals....
Facts about the United States Postal Service....
Money's not the issue, but the USDA wants to help anyway....
Focusing on building jobs and the rural economy, the first ever Kansas Marketplace will take place ...
“I know working in the country can sometimes mean making some unusual deliveries,” says Mark Eskildsen, who has been with the United States Postal Service since 1984. “I’ve delivered chickens, bees, even crickets. This means being extra careful and keeping the packages warm.”
But even with well-protected packages, getting live chicks to rural route customers can be difficult at times.
“I have an 83-mile route,” Eskildsen says. “Sixty-seven of those miles are on gravel roads. They can be rough, or even mushy. The worst time I ever had was in 1993, when many area gravel roads were eroded and impassable. When it was possible, residents picked up their mail at the post office.”
The Postal Service provides a stipend for using his own vehicle for mail delivery, Eskildsen says. “But with the wear and tear on the car, sometimes the stipend isn’t enough.”
Eskildsen’s route includes 270 rural mailboxes and averages 6.25 hours per day to complete.
“I’ve lived here all my life, and I like that I personally know more than 90 percent of the people on my route.”
Positive postmaster
Postmaster Carolyn Lee has similar positive feelings about the unusual aspects of rural postal service.
“I guess many postmasters probably don’t have to deal with poultry on a regular basis,” Lee says. “But in a rural post office, the postmaster has to be familiar with all aspects of the operation.”
Lee says the Charlotte post office, for example, doesn’t have a separate person to handle rental boxes or someone to perform maintenance.
“We just have two fulltime employees,” she said. “Mark and myself.”
Lee will celebrate her 30th year with the USPS on July 1. A surgical technician prior to taking her postal service exam, Lee’s first postal service assignment was part-time with the Goose Lake Post Office. Several area postal positions followed before she became the Lost Nation postmaster in 1991 and the Charlotte postmaster in 1993.
“My mother was also a rural postmaster,” Lee says. “So I knew a bit about the job before I actually became one. For a brief period, we were rural postmasters at the same time.”