USPS mail carriers: These are their stories

With the expansion of the internet comes the ability to have practically anything shipped and delivered in less than two days. The old-fashioned title of “letter carrier” no longer accurately represents the role of a mail deliverer.

Each day, a wide array of items fills their mail trucks as they depart to their respective routes.

Mailperson Thomas Hall has seen this change occur over his 30 years working for the United States Postal Service. He said he has worked delivering mail in rural counties, on campus and throughout Orange County.

“Now (mail carriers are) delivering everything from, you know, tables to swimming pools,” he said. “A lot of difference from the old days because everybody is ordering everything off the internet.”

As a mailperson for a partially rural county, Hall has had strange instances of delivering bees and insects to his customers’ doorsteps.

But he’s not the only one who has experienced unusual packages.

One mailperson spoke of delivering a cage of baby chicks. Another, kimchee. One of the UNC campus mail deliverers, who asked to be referred to as “L,” spoke of their possibly life-saving delivery.

“I think I (delivered) an organ one time,” L said. “It was going to the hospital.”

Many of the mail carriers asked not to be named, citing a USPS policy that prevents them from using their names when discussing their jobs.

In reference to this policy, Tom Ouellette, the USPS corporate communication field contact for North Carolina, said USPS prefers that mail carriers “reach out” to the corporate office before providing their names to press.

In addition to the cargo, many mail deliverers have a collection of stories of strange happenings while working.

“So, I’m driving the truck one day, and I’m going from box to box and I look in my rearview and I see a bunch of kids running behind the truck,” L said. “So, finally they catch up to me and they’re huffing and puffing, ‘Mr. Mailman, could we have your autograph?’”

He said this was when NBA player, Karl “The Mailman” Malone, was at the peak of his success, and that these kids wanted the autograph of the “real” mailman.

The same mailperson also describes a time when he delivered a white powder during the height of the anthrax scare.

“It freaked me out a little,” he said.

Mail deliverers are often faced with dangers during their job, ranging from the occasional ferocious dog to a harmful weather forecast. One mailperson recounted a time when she received a tornado warning on the job.

“I had three people come out to me on three different occasions,” she said. “I had it on the radio, the phone and a customer came out and told me I needed to hide.”

In an effort to protect herself, she left her mail truck and hid in a ditch alongside the road.

Hall described a time where he too was, as he states it, “brushed with the weird.” While he was delivering mail, a UNC student “came to the door in nothing but a leather mini skirt.”

Every day, as shipments of mail are delivered to their rightful owners, a new collection of strange tales are gathered.

@cjheld

swerve@dailytarheel.com