[John D]

My mailbox is at the end of my driveway. I run all through my neighborhood. Every house has their mailbox in the same place. There is no reason the carriers need to drive, other than that the union says they need to.
I am not blaming the carriers. I am sure they want their jobs as easy as possible, but they should not be complaining about hardships that they have not gone through in decades.

[muawiyah]

The union doesn't say postal carriers need to drive. There are things called "park and loop" routes.

What's going on is that the old system of using walking carriers with relay boxes simply did not meet the needs of modern mail volumes. Used to be a route might have 500 stops with each one getting 3 or 4 pieces. Then we started having routes where those 500 stops were getting several times that volume in mail.

You could build relay boxes every block or two and send guys in trucks out to fill them, or you could simply give the carriers a vehicle big enough to hold all the mail at the start of the route, and let them drive.

It's strictly economics with a bow to carrier safety. These guys are on the streets and there are crazy drivers out there.