Paperboys are now older guys driving minivans.. wtf?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

[The following random thoughts are slightly off-topic, but paper route related]

Maybe it was just me, but when I had a paper route around the ages of 10-15 (both a morning and an afternoon, which allowed me to pay cash for my first car, by the way), I would get off of my bike, walk up to the house, and put the paper in the exact spot that the customer requested: mailbox, screen door, porch, doorstep, whatever. You don’t get that with the car-driving type of delivery person. They are chuckers; maybe so were the rest of the bike-riding deliverers, too, for all I know. Maybe the extra trouble of hand-placing the paper helped explain the great tips I got. For delivering around 30 papers daily (for each route), I was making a pretty good sum. How much it was, I don’t remember, but it must have been pretty good for me to keep doing it for so long. $100 a week? $150? Who knows? But what did I spend, an hour or two a day before school and after school? That was a great gig! Christmas, of course, was the mother lode for tips. You could make hundreds then, which was amazing for a kid. Plus, you’d get the occasional book full of Lifesavers. Pay-ahead by check (how I pay for my paper now) didn’t exist; cash was taped in an envelope to the door weekly, or you went door to door ringing bells and saying “collecting!” The only bad thing was finding someone to cover your route if your family went on vacation. By the way, this wasn’t that long ago: I’m only 32.

Just out of curiosity–around how much money do adult paper deliverers pull in? I know each route is different, but I’m just curious, if anyone happens to know.

22

I was lucky to make $10 a week (if the cheapskates paid me) for a hundred papers during the week and 200 on Sunday. And that was after I had to stuff them at 4 AM on Sunday morning.

Course, I’m old now. :smiley:

23

I don’t know how much pay varies from area to area, but I make about $4 per subscription, per month. Right now I carry just under 300 papers. I’ve carried as many as 440, but it was a major PIA. I’d hesitate to go much over 350 unless it was my primary job; even then I’d count on being late every Sunday.
My paper is a dinky daily hometown edition; I’d be interested in hearing how much other papers pay.

24

Mr. Torie’s paper route is very similair to bodypoet’s
He gets the papers by five. Delivers them by seven. He loves it. Tons of free time and the money is really good for what he does.
Gobear your tip was sufficient. With three hundred customers, he raked in. :slight_smile:

25

I don’t know how much they pull in… but as to placement of papers up here it is policy to go and put the paper where requested and not toss it. (This is generally done by parking at one end of a street, grabbing a bunch of papers and walking up one side then back down the other then drive to the next street)

26

Four bucks per subscription per month sounds pretty good. So if ** torie**'s and bodypoet’s routes are indeed similar, then that’s around $1200 per month for around 14 hours of work per week. That sounds really good, now that I think about it. As others have pointed out, you get to relax somewhat, listen to the radio a bit… Geez, I might have to look into finding a route myself.

What are the downsides? I really don’t mind getting up early, so I wouldn’t consider that a minus. Wear and tear on the car, I suppose, but I think most routes are pretty localized, aren’t they? Carriers, around how many miles do you travel daily? Hmmm…more downsides… Snowy days, obviously, must be a real pain, I would think. Then there’s keeping track of money; do carriers still have to do that, or does everyone pay directly to the newspaper company (like I do, every three or six months)? How do carriers get paid? Weekly? Monthly? Around how many papers do you deliver per hour? The numbers above seem to indicate around 150 per hour. That’s pretty quick, what with all the driving, isn’t it?

And do the adult carriers really clean up on Christmas tips like I used to as a kid? With 300 customers, couldn’t we be talking several thousand dollars, if all are as generous as gobear?

Sorry to ask so many questions, but this is sounding very interesting to me as a part-time money-maker.

27

I did a bit of baby sitting too (yeah, a guy babysitter), but I was a cool one. But the babysitting wasn’t as steady for me as the route was. At the end of the week, I new I was getting paid because the delivery was required everyday. Monday through Friday was an afternoon route, and then the Saturday morning paper. Wasn’t too bad, but I was lucky that I didn’t have to deliver in a shady part of town.

28

I wouldn’t know how to tip our paper carrier. We get a bill directly from the newspaper each month and pay it in advance; the carrier doesn’t slow down as he passes our house. How would we get him a tip, other than leap out at him in the early morning dark and scare the living you-know-what out of him? (I say “him,” but it could be a her; I’m not up at that hour to find out!)

29

Starting last year sometime, we’ve had an older guy in a truck start delivering out paper. He just pulls into the driveway, walks up to the porch and sets the paper down. We’ve had a few awkward meetings when we tried to pull into the driveway at the same time. He usually has a child with him. A paper-boy-aged child. Hm.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by nineiron *
**What are the downsides? **

It looks like you already thought of most of the downsides, nineiron.
My route is only about 26 miles a day, and that includes a trip several miles out of my way to pick up my papers from the paper dock. Wear and tear is considerable though, because of all the starting and stopping. I expect to get new brakes twice a year, new tie rods or axles at least once, new tires every year, and it looks like I’m going to need a new emergency brake cable again this year. Also, let’s see…hazard lights, headlights, etc.
(An aside: I am considered a walking carrier, even though I drive my entire route. Motor carriers drive a lot further on the rural routes, and make about $1.00 per route more per month.)
Snowy days SUCK. Custormers are very understanding for the first three or so snows, and after that they figure you oughta have the bad weather in hand, apparently.
Money: I only collect from about 3 customers. The rest pay directly through the office. I get paid once a month, in one nice big check.

Around how many papers do you deliver per hour? The numbers above seem to indicate around 150 per hour. That’s pretty quick, what with all the driving, isn’t it?
I deliver about 270 papers in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. My routes vary quite a bit in the amount of time required, and I’m not including the driving time between routes here:
Route 1: 80-ish papers, 50 minutes
Route 2: 80 papers, 30 minutes
Route 3: 110 papers, 45 minutes.
Sundays are a different story; it takes at least 5 hours to do a Sunday run alone.

**And do the adult carriers really clean up on Christmas tips like I used to as a kid? **?
I do pretty well at Christmas. This year I’ve made about $700 so far; there will be more holiday tips on my January tip, and several customers tip in January. On a normal month, I make about $150-200 in tips.

Hope that helps. It’s a great part-time job–easy to get, easy to quit, and no (or very little) dealing with people.

Mama Tiger, you should be able to add your tip to your bill payment. Check your invoice and see if there’s a “tip” line you can fill out. I make sure to send out letters twice a year that inlude my name, address, and phone number, and I think that’s helped me tip-wise.

31

Well, the good ol’ days aren’t completely gone: Our paper is still delivered by a genuine paperboy, and he pretty much delivers them whenever. There probably IS a certain time they’re supposed to be delivered by, but it seems this deadline is mostly ignored (not that anyone cares). The paperboy usually brings them by sometime in the afternoon, and he’ll put them right in the mailbox or hand it to you if you’re outside.

Just a few years ago I helped my friend deliver papers a few times…it was a pain in the ass. We had to stuff like 100 papers with dozens of flyers. Bleecch. And as noted above, we sure as hell never did this in the morning.

Once a week the paperboy comes by and we pay him.

So there ya have it…paperboys are still alive and well in some parts of the world :slight_smile:

32

Our new paperboy is a young woman as was the third previous one. Both drove the routes to stuff the rolled up paper in the paper tube next to the mail box.
Some 6x years ago I helped deliver 400 advertising papers to every apartment in four city blocks. As a helper I was paid the magnificient sume of 30 cents per delivery, 60 cents a week. Two ears later the HS boy graduated, moved away and I inherited his route. Now I received ninety cents per delivery out of which my helper got 30 cents.
It took two of us two hours to deliver 400 papers which had to be delivered to and affixed to the apartment door knob or screen door handle. Just think of the helper @ 15 cents and me 30 cents/hour!
A few yeasrs later, as an apprentice machinist, the pay was 45 c/hr.

“Beware of the Cog”

33

We have roadside paperboxes, and because I live on the inside of a sharp curve, I’m relatively close to 4 of them. I can vouch for what bodypoet says about the wear and tear…

Earlier this year, I had some bad insomnia. Every single morning I could tell when it was about 5:30, because I would hear that sound…squealing brakes – mailbox #1. Squealing brakes – mailbox #2. And so on and so on.

P.S. Although this is the Pit, I’m not complaining here…I always figured that (s)he was up working his butt off and didn’t have the money to spare to get a brake job.

34

Hello, I am Mr Torie. There is not very many downsides to this job aside from getting up early. If you ask me the benifits far outway the negatives. With only working roughly 2 hours per day that leaves plenty of spare time to do what ever you need to, be it go back to sleep until noon or work a full or part time job. It really is ideal for a college student like me, I make enought to have it be my primary income and live comfortably and still have plenty of time to go to class and study.

This job is definatly more practical than working in a 6.00 retail store (No offence, I’ve been one and will probably be one again.) Most of the people my age that ask me about my job think that it is a pretty sweet deal. I don’t mind explaining it, after the initial embarassment of admiting to the title of paperboy. A few of them even ask me how to get started.

As for my specific route its almost the cream of the crop as far as paper routes go. I have to pick up my papers in bundles at a location about 15 minutes away. My route is always around 300 people, what it’s been since I started around 3 years ago. 300 is on the larger side of most of the routes of this newspaper. Some carriers do handle a lot more if they start taking on additional routes in other areas near to them, the largest route that I know of at my pickup spot is 450 and thats made of 3 smaller routes.
Mine is expecially nice because all 300 of my cusomers are in one giant retirement neighborhood, this is split into two parts car work and one part apartment work. Every one in the actual neighborhoods has a paper tube to place the papers in, which means alot of stop and go driving but after a month of running the same route you can do it with out looking at the road.
With the apartment building there is a shopping cart that I place everything in as I walk through the halls tossing into peoples doorways.

The pay is very similer to bodypoets I deliver the main local newspaper and make about 3.75 per customer. my tips per moth usually are around 50.00, but this christmas I printed out cards for every customer and that went along way. Most everyone that tipped were tipping between 10.00 and 25.00, the tips stop after christmas day but this year I collected 1500.00 from people telling me how great I am at being on time.

This really helps feed the ego.

35

Pardon me while I go apply for a paper route.

36

Around here the paper lady is about 50 and thinks that being paperlady gives her the right to drive on the wrong side of the road, and yell at you when you honk your horn at her because she refuses to drive on the correct road side. She quit after a few months at this. Now there is an older lady that does the route.

37

My brother was a paper boy from 10-15, until he decided he was old enough for a “real” job. A few times a year he would go away for a few days or a week for summer camp and class trips and such, so I took over his route. We live in a small town, around 4000 people, and his route covered about half of the north part of town, probably 100 houses. If I remember right, I would get around $20 or $30 for subbing for him for a week. What’s that…around $100 a month? Not that much.

Around here, sometime when I was in high school (five or six years ago) the paper company stopped using paperboys because of child labor laws. Having 10 year olds peddle around at 5 AM for a few hours for less than minimum wage apparantly was illegal. Good thing they never looked into a 12 year old working for his uncle doing construction work with large saws and air hammers for $4/hour.

38

I filled in for a friend a few times back around '85. We delivered after school and I would guess had about 80-90 subscribers I think and Thursdays would suck as that is when the free paper would come out and everyone along the route would get one of those. About doubled the number of papers. We also collected, I think it was monthly. My friend had this book with 12 tearout coupons and each subscriber had their own page. When they paid we gave toreout the coupon as a receipt.

We rode around on bicycles with a delivery bag on our shoulder.

39

I used to get my paper delivered by a guy in a Red Top Cab. I reckon that’s a pretty good side job for a cabbie. I don’t know if that was kosher or not though.

40

Okay - I’m confused.

Our daily paper is sitting at the foot of the driveway or on the lawn by 6 AM every morning. This is completely feasible, as we have a local van with a couple guys in it that rides around and tosses it there.

Ten-year-old kids on bikes aren’t generally as reliable, or fast. Nor are their parents probably willing to let them out of the house at four in the morning. I honestly don’t understand how the ‘traditional’ paperboy thing worked. Did you just settle for getting the paper as late as, like, eight in the morning? People paid for their subscriptions through a delivery kid? Isn’t that an awful lot of money to entrust to a not-quite-bicycle-messenger?