It may be some useful information. The mods can ban the user and leave the post in case anyone is interested. Maybe just inform the user of a more productive way to provide such information instead of banning.
President of what company?
Regardless, it does kind of read like an ad. And this is an old thread. However, the advice I gave still is valid and there are plenty of people who deliver books for quick infusions of cash. Not that closing the thread would prevent anyone from reading it, true.
Since there is some input that Sandra’s info could be useful, I’m leaving it open.
So, what about the trombone?
JohnT, in your description, were you talking about the full-size phone books? A lot of the ones I see now are smaller sized ones, that might be more feasible for someone with a sedan (assuming the same pay per book, rather than per pound).
It’s been a while, but you get paid lesser for smaller books. All things being equal, we would price contractor pays on the size and weight of the books. So if you're delivering route A in year 1 and the book weighs 1 pound, you'll get .16/per book. If, in year 2, the book is now 14 ounces, you’ll now get around $.14/per book for the same route.
The above numbers are an illustration and the pricing was never that simple.
Back in the late '80s, early 90s I would deliver the Atlanta Bell South directories. 1 WP, 2 YP, and a neighborhood book… you would make up to a $1 per stop, though you would have to go back to the delivery station and reload 4, 5 times. I would easily clear $400/day using my little Toyota.
Those days are LONG gone, though.
All the phone books in our area either get tossed at the end of the driveway, or put under the mailboxes at the edge of the road. We signed up several years ago for an opt-out of receiving all phone books since we don’t use them and consider them a waste. First year we didn’t get any - since then we’ve gotten more and more each year. I finally complained this year to YB.COM and they called for more info. SAID they wouldn’t deliver to us again, but I won’t be holding my breath…
Kinda ironic. I stopped by the local convenience store for a snack today and there was a dude sitting in an older minivan with a bunch of phone books in plastic bags.
I didn’t have one on my steps when I got home like usual but I don’t think they pay people to deliver them like by your method out here.
I know last year we saw an old beat-up van driving down our street with the side door open. There was a young kid (under 10) almost hanging out the side tossing out phone books onto the driveways as they passed each house.
Sounds like littering to me.
It sounds like this type of work is typically done on an independent contractor basis rather than as an employee hire. How comfortable are the companies with their contractors hiring subcontractors or employees or about doing business with partnerships (e.g. me and my little sister want to do it together and sign up to do the same route together, understanding that we don’t get any more money than what we would have gotten if we had done it alone)? Is it meaningfully possible to get a route that pays $X a delivery, then subcontract or hire it out to someone for 3/4 of $X, then go off and get another route and end up managing your own delivery company? Of course, if your employees or subcontractors mess up, it’s your responsibility - you’re the boss!
You make about $6 an hour, before subtracting gas expenses and the wear and tear on your car. The toll on your body is substantial, and the weight of the books will destroy any vehicle smaller than a medium pickup truck or cargo van in short order. Some routes are MUCH better than others–that $6/hr figure is for the good routes. If I had access to a time machine, the first thing I would do is travel back in time, find my former self, and kick him repeatedly for having done this awful, horribly compensated, tedious, strenuous work.
I helped my buddy do this when I was 15, he was 16 and drove my grandma’s car. This was 1997.
We worked all evening. He drove, I dropped off the phone books, mostly in areas around where we lived, but fairly scattered across the back roads. So there was a decent amount of driving and we got lost a couple of times.
I remember it as a fairly fun time cruising around for a 15 year old, but the pay was basically nothing. I think it was supposed to be $50, but minus gas money and splitting it between us, we each should have got about $10-$15. However, I don’t think they ever actually paid us.
So there’s my delivering phone books story. If you’re 15 and want an excuse to get out of the house, go for it. I have fond memories of it as my first non-mowing job. However, if you’re an adult and cruising around for 5 hours for basically no money doesn’t sound good to you, I’d choose another job.
Also, isn’t it just littering? Back when I did it, phone books were at least useful. Now they’re only good for weighing down the trash can.
You are correct - you are working as an Independent Contractor (IC.)
You’re allowed to subcontract the work. Many professional distributors in fact do this. At my time with my parents company we did send out 1099’s in excess of $500k, with the record being, IIRC, over 750k. And many of the arrangements were of the "I get paid .25/book and I’ll pay you .15 and pocket .10" variety. Of course, out of that .10, the main contractor was responsible for gas, vehicle maintenance, and insurance so at the end of the day he was likely taking home .04/book… but if he had enough teams to deliver 15k books/day (not uncommon) he was making $600/day ($3,600/week, $150k/year) in take-home. (Figures assume 6 working days a week and 40 weeks of work a year.)
You can work as a partnership (you can do whatever you want as long as you get the books delivered properly), but the contract is signed solely with you or your sister - not both. The details of the agreement you have with your sister is of no interest to the company with whom you’re signing the contract.
No biggie, but if you were only doing $6/hour worth of work you either:
- Lived in a really crappy area, full of hills and mountains and took some truly shitty routes
or,
- Wasn’t really good at the job in the first place
Ain’t no thing - like all jobs, some people are better at doing it than others.
I got to be pretty good at determining who would last at doing the job. Your worst distributors? Overweight white guys who couldn’t shut up about how great workers they were and would be all “Just give me 10 routes and I’ll have them done tomorrow!” Those guys would crap out every. single. time.
Best workers? Women, especially ones with kids. They might only take out one route and decide that this job sucks, but they will get that one route delivered cleanly, with no problems, all their paperwork done properly.
The $6/hr figure was not only my own experience, but that of many others I asked who were doing the same job. It does, in fact, make sense, as at the time the minimum wage was $5.85/hr and the distributing company would have naturally adjusted the compensation downward as long as people were willing to do the work, until new people stopped showing up and/or the existing people started quitting. Since they were employing people with no qualifications, they would be able to pay the bare minimum.
In my experience, the “people who would last” were the most desperate and the least otherwise employable. You don’t ruin your body and destroy your car for peanuts unless you really have no alternative. The reason so many people “crapped out,” as you put it, is that many who showed up for the job had no idea what shitty work it was and how ridiculously low the pay was. They had the impression that their “employer” was going to pay them decently. When they found out how wrong they were about that, they bailed. As did I–though I did eventually learn how to cherry-pick the best routes, which was like selecting the apples in the barrel that were only half rotten.
I actually did this job in several cities, in all kinds of terrain, in all kinds of weather, rural, business, apartments, single family homes, etc. The only even halfway decent money I ever could make was in delivering to apartment buildings and businesses. Other types of routes were hopeless—I actually lost money on one ridiculously extended rural route. And I do, in fact, think I did the job rather well, as I kept devising small labor- and time-saving methods to speed up my routes. I did my paperwork and delivered to all the destinations listed. I also moved rather quickly, as sometimes I barely had enough time to finish before the sun went down (we weren’t supposed to deliver after dark). I dealt with muddy access roads, unidentifiable addresses, loose dogs, and the difficulty of driving down the road at 10 MPH trying to determine where the %^$%# the next delivery was.
The bottom line is that delivering phone books is an exploitative, brutal job that pays far less than minimum wage (and hides behind the “independent contractor” shield to do that), and the assholes who take advantage of desperate people by offering this pseudo-job should be burned alive.
I did it last summer; the advertisement coincided with us having a spell of relatively cool weather, so I did my deliveries in the early morning and in the evening, because I don’t take heat very well. Most of my clients were apartment buildings (my own included) so it wasn’t that difficult, although some of it was a residential area. I do have a dolly cart, so that made things easier.
I don’t remember exactly what the pay rate was, but I did make $138 for my route. Bagging the books was what took most of my time, and my payment was on a prepaid VISA card. The exercise was nice too.
As for contacting people, I have been called about whether I got my phone book. And as for how it’s delivered, one of my deliveries was to a home-based business, and the woman was shocked that I knocked on her door (that’s what the instructions said to do!) because she said it was usually just tossed into her yard.