My first “ask the ____” thread.
I was a paperboy from sometime in 1973 ‘till 1979. I delivered from a bicycle. There must be some of these left, but all I ever see these days is adults flinging papers from a car. This trend started while I was doing the job, and within perhaps 5 years afterward, paper “boys” had gone the way of the Bison…not yet extinct, but quite notable should you see one in the wild.
A few people were pushing the gender neutral term ”news carrier” at that time, but everyone knew me as the “paperboy”. Apologies if any dopers find that sexist.
Hopefully it won’t kill the thread, but to anticipate the first question (and one I’ve often pondered) “Why is this now an adult job?”
I used to think it was just a matter of “kids these days”, but there is a lot more to it than that. A number of factors, no doubt, but here are the ones I can think of:
-No cite, but I recall reading in minimum wage debates that the minimum wage has not kept pace with inflation since 1977. Nearly all the paper boys I knew quit at 16 years old, because you could make more money at a minimum wage job, which due to child labor laws, you could not be hired for until you were that old. As the minimum wage lost ground against inflation, paper-routes became more economically viable to those who couldn’t find a “decent” job.
-This was the era when automakers began closing factories, and manufacturing jobs really started moving abroad. While adult unemployment was high, adult blue-collar unemployment was soaring. And there were plenty of college grads looking for anything. If you lacked even a high school diploma, flinging papers might be the best thing available to you.
-This was when stay-at-home moms began to vanish. Due to the extreme size on those days, mom would drive me on the route on Wednesdays (food section, grocery ads) and Sundays. Also on days when there was snow or ice on the roads (Denver). It also fell to parents to help out when the paperboy was sick. Without a stay-at-home mom, being a paperboy would have been much tougher especially for the younger kids.
-Newspapers have been losing readership for a long time, but I think the trend became critical in the 70s and 80s. This had several effects on the paperboys.
-Customer density decreased which meant you had to haul papers much farther for the same income.
-With reduced readership, papers had to lower advertising rates, or at least could not raise them apace with inflation. This meant more ads, which meant increased loads for the paperboys.
-Trying to keep readers, papers started adding more magazine sections, lifestyle features, etc. Again, more weight. The papers I see today are 150-200% as heavy as what I delivered. Newspapers in 1940-50 movies look like about half of what I was delivering. While I was doing the job, we had to shift to larger and heavier rubber bands, as those that did the job in 1973 were not reliable by 1976 or so.
-Afternoon papers, especially, began to decline. An after school route is a lot easier for a kid to handle than a before-dawn route. I had an afternoon route, and I had nothing but pity for the kids that delivered the morning paper. The morning paper in my area was being delivered by an adult well before I quit. A few years after I quit, that afternoon paper changed to a morning paper. I think that people raised prior to television expected to read the paper in the evening. Those raised with television expected to watch that. Certainly most of my customers were middle-aged and elderly. Only a few had kids my age or younger. The younger families seemed to prefer the morning paper.