Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Baby, It's Cold Out There!

Much of the nation is in a grip of cold. And yet, we are still out there, moving the mail.
Do you have any cold stories to swap?
Comment here.


Photo, Tom Calkins

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The coldest I ever remember it being was when I was in the U.S. Air Force and was stationed in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was
-72 with the windchill. Now that my friends, is cold!!! Brrr

PdxNative said...

Portland OR is normally a pretty mild climate, but look out when the ice storms come! As a letter carrier in Gresham, a suburb, I was chained up and out on my mounted route, to find the mailboxes were all sealed in an inch of solid ice. The heavy wooden handle of my ice scraper earned its keep that day, as I had to give every box on my route a hard whap with it in order to break the ice and open the boxes. The boxes and the scraper fared just fine, but I discovered muscles in my arm that I had forgotten!

Joan said...

I took my kids home one Christmas to LaCrosse WI and wind chill hit a -75. Plus there was about 6-7 feet of snow on the ground. Glad I live in Denver now. We've gotten frigid weather this year but it is unusual.

Francis said...

If these mail boxes are frozen and could not be opened how does the delivery person deliver the mail? It was cold , snowed in and icy and no one was on the road and even state government and city government and schools were closed but somehow our mail still got delivered and we did not have good way to get to the mail box. Why can't we vote to get exceptions on snow and extreme conditions days? We should value our personnel safety also and don't the customers care to get it late on these days. We seem to push not hard enough on these issues. Are there any advanced mail boxes where it can be delivered inside home or camera installed so that we can view the mailbox before they can be retrieved.

Anonymous said...

We didn't deliver yesterday! The HCR driver came in his personal vehicle and dropped off 7 newspapers. That was all the plant was able to advance us. Too many transportation avenues were closed by order of State Police. I sent my carriers home. Not a single customer complained. It took me 3 hours to go 38 miles but I finally made it in. All my carriers showed up. Today we made delivery to all but 2 addresses. Proud of my crew. Today's wind chill was -20 and my crew beat DOIS projections.