Blog Category: Commentary

Author's Name: Robert Nelson Vance
Author's Email: Email Contact Form
Author's Website: http://robertnelsonvance.com

Why does delivering papers suck soo much!?!

One would suspect that it might be because of the weather. Unpredictable, untimely, Ohio weather.One minute it's nice out, the next it's pouring rain, the next it's snowing, the next it's sleeting, etc. Over and over and over and over again. Doesn't matter what the forecast is the night before when you go to bed, cause when you wake up, it's shitty out in some fashion or another. I mean seriously, you never go to bed when it's shitty out and then wake up and to your surprise it is nice out - nope, that would never happen. So the weather, that's the weather.

Well, if it's not the weather that bothers you, then what could be next? Oh, I know, the before the ass crack of dawn delivery schedule. Do the math people - if you want your paper on your step by six in the morning so that you have any sort of time to read it before you go to work, then that means that the delivery boy has to be up way before six. Let's do some more simple math, if the delivery boy (or girl, common people) has the average route, say maybe 120 houses, and it takes 30 seconds per house to deliver the papers, that means it takes an hour to deliver the papers for his route. This doesn't sound that bad right? Well, forget it! That would be easy... assuming that all of the houses are next to one another!!! They aren't though, they are every third or forth or fifth house, maybe, sometimes, even more. Meaning, that is it is every fifth house, your paperboy has to walk past 600 houses just to deliver his 120 papers! That could be an entire neighborhood. So it, often, takes more than thirty seconds per paper, maybe even a minute a paper. Why do you ask is this take so long you ask? Well, some more simple math. An average house's property width is about 40 feet. If you have to walk past 600 houses, that's a total of 24,000 feet for the entire route. This translates to about 4.5 miles. How long does it take you to walk 4.5 miles? So now we're up to, say, 2 hours to deliver the papers - on a "good" day. Which brings me to my next sucktitude point.... You haven't even rolled and bagged the papers yet.

On a easy day, you'll have the paper that has no ads or supplemental sections inserted into it - this is pretty easy. Pick up the paper, roll it, stick it in a bad, and put it on your cart to take out to your car when you're done with them all. Aha, but now here's the fine print; that's only, usually, two days of the week. On about four days of the week, there are ads and an additional section that you have to also pick up and roll with the paper before putting it in the bag for delivery. On a typical Sunday, you may have four, five, or more inserts. And then to go a step further, you'll have those Sundays where some company wants to include their product in the bag - this past Sunday was a sample of Advil, next Sunday is a small box of Cheerios. Can you imagine lugging around 120 Sunday newspapers, each with a box of Cheerios? Oh yea, I forgot to mention that your Sunday route is twice the size of your daily route - because they actually let people choose from one of ten, literally ten, subscriptions. So a lot of people get only the Sunday paper. So if you can roll about 8 daily newspaper per minute, that means you'll spend, on a weekday, only 15 minutes rolling your papers. But keep in mind that this is when there's no inserts and you only have 120 papers - on days where there's more inserts, or there's more papers, it's going to take you considerably longer.

Now we're up to about, let's say, on average, 2.5 hours from start to finish. That means, to have the paper on your porch by 6:00am, on an easy day, I need to be at work by 3:30am. Of course then you have to take the weather into account - wind, rain, sleet, and snow all slow you down significantly. I would say that, in Ohio, you have one of these days, on average, half the week, if not more. So let's suggest giving yourself a little extra time just in-case half the papers you throw get caught by the wind and land in the yard, or hit the ice on the porch and slide off, or any number of other scenarios that will end result in you having to walk up, pick up the paper, and throw it again or carry it to the porch. So, that said, let's say you need to be at work by 2:30am. Hahahaha! By the way, sometimes, the truck that delivers the papers to the warehouse that you work out of doesn't show up on time - aka, 2:30am when the warehouse opens. Sometimes it won't even show up till 3:30am. You're screwed!

But wait, this all raises another point.... warehouse you say? Yes. They don't deliver the papers to your home anymore so that you can sit in-front of the television and roll your papers, or so that you can have your family help and then go back to bed after they're rolled. Nope. They make you drive across town to one of their warehouses and roll the papers standing at a table amongst a hundred other people who are also dreading going out on this in-climate morning. So now, you may as well say that you need to be up by 2:00am to have your papers delivered by 6:00am. Keep in mind that this is only on an average day where you only have 120 papers. I have two routes. That means that I have about 200 papers on an average day.

Now, ROI analysis. We're talking about maybe our hours of work on weekdays and Saturday, and maybe five hours of work on Sundays. On weekdays you only get paid about ten cents per paper and Sundays about forty cents per paper. This is if your routes don't suck like mine, I do get paid slightly more. This translates into you making about $12 Monday through Saturday and $48 on Sundays with you 120 paper route. Meaning about $120/week for all of this crap mentioned above. Oh yea, and then you have to take out taxes (-$36/week), bags to put your papers in (-$10/week), and gas to drive to your route location and around your route (-$17/week, getting 20miles/gallon and with gas at $3/gallon). This means that at the end of the week, you've made a net income of only $57. Tell me, is that worth it!?!?

Moral of the story. Don't get a paper route - the weather sucks, the hours suck, the pay sucks, it just all around sucks. Oh yea, and if you get the paper, tip your paper boy well.