Posted on 05/16/2015 4:03:41 PM PDT by SamAdams76
I had same experience. I even had so many customers I had kids working for me.
Newspapers are about defunct. The advent of the internet ended the good old days of paper routes.
I hated Thursday because that was the day all the advertisement inserts had to be placed into the paper.
I had to get up extra early to place the ads and fold the paper and it loaded the bag to the point that I had to make two trips.
I did make a few quarters selling sunfish to black people on the Sudbury River. I went back for a visit (ick) as an adult and now that bridge I used fish off of warns people in (I think) 8 languages the fish are contaminated.
I learned how to work by helping my father in his business.
Great post.
I was just talking about what this was like with my 12 year old son earlier today. He wants to make some money, but there aren’t any paper routes any more and no yard work either. Illegal aliens do both those jobs now.
It would be harder to do a paper route now as less and less people take papers. I did an afternoon route in the summers. On my 10 speed. Most houses took the paper. Now it would be few and far between.
Inserts. Hated those inserts.
I suspect that most delivered the afternoon paper which is most likely extinct. Morning papers are off the press by 5:00 AM and expected by 6:00 or 6:30 which would be tough on school days.
Quit the paper route to bus tables, when I was 15 and could get a work permit.
Paper routes were great jobs for young people to get a start in the working world.
Today they are just jobs for dumbed down Americans, too lazy to develop real skills. So they take a job that a grade school kid can do.
Same thing with fast food. What WAS a starting job for yesterdays high school kid, has become a career choice for todays Obama voter.
The current “paper boys” are the adults who deliver packaged advertisements via their vehicles and throw them onto your driveways every Saturday morning..........
I've had the Wall Street Journal delivered for years. Even though I take the online edition and read it on my iPad on the commuter train to work. I don't think you save any money just getting the online version so I take the paper as well, which I take to the local dog shelter where they apparently have uses for them.
I had 2 lawn mowing jobs because of my paper route.
I don't know about that.......I don't know where you live but I would think your kid would be able to score some neighbor lawns by undercutting the cost of whatever landscaping that is doing the work......
Me too. Also, I shoveled driveways of some of my newspaper customers on snowy morning. They loved that - waking up to a newspaper and a shoveled walkway. I had so much energy back then!
I had the experience of being a paper delivery boy.
I also had the experience of delivering papers as an adult.
When delivering the papers as a boy, I delivered just in our own neighborhood. There were about 50 customers.
As an adult, I took a paper route, at a time when I had been laid off from a job, had a family to support, and was having trouble finding new professional employment. As an adult, the route had about 220 customers. We carriers went to a central warehouse each day, in the middle of the night, to pick up our papers and get ready for delivery.
The reason carriers nowadays toss the paper in the driveway is because there are so many deliveries to be made in a short time, that it would be impractical to deliver on foot, or by bike, and still get all the deliveries done on time.
He’s still around. His name is Matt Drudge.
I’ve recently had delivery problems. My newspaper told me they can’t give me the name of my carrier because it is a privacy issue. My long term carrier always left a Christmas card with name and phone number. The new carrier now throws the paper on my driveway (if I even get it) instead of putting it in the newspaper tube.
I’m thinking these newspapers have become as worthless in informing us as the TV. They now want us to hit their website and give them advertising dollars while wasting hours surfing, instead of allowing us to simply read an informative newspaper while multi-tasking in the powder room.
Where is he? That’s a Good question! I’ve been waiting all friggin day for the paper! (kidding)
My first job ever, in the early 1970s, was a paperboy for the Long Island Press here in NYC.
Omgosh, the green sheet! My dad used to read that.
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