Anyone here deliver newspapers?

Collecting sucked. Thursday was collect day and it took more than twice as long to do the route.

 

I shared a paper route with the kid across the street. It means I didn't make much, but it made it much more tolerable to do a half a route.

 

We finally cancelled our subscription becuase of inconsistent delivery. We didn't really want to. I'm out of the business and my wife still freelances for the paper.

It just got to be too frustrating. We probably went six or seven straight weekends with at least one missed paper.

I was surprised no one ever called us to ask us why. We'd been subscribers ever since we moved here in '08.

 

I had a paper route from 7th grade until early spring of 12th grade.

About 60 papers over our mile-long street. Took a half-hour (on nice sunny days with small papers) to an hour or more (in the winter in thigh-deep snow with 200-page papers).

I made enough money for high-school walking-around money, but that was about it.

It gave me an excuse/alibi not to get involved with some stuff I probably should have done in HS, so looking back, I should have quit it after 8th grade.

But money was really tight for our family then and there was no way I was gonna get $10-15 a week allowance out of my dad.

Not that he was a skinflint -- he just didn't have the money. Heck, during the school year, I probably spent half my paper route money on school lunches.

 

I did this, the one time I tried an early-morning (read: middle-of-the-night) car route for an area metro while in college. :-[

I was majoring in journalism at the time and figured it'd be quick, easy, and, really, pretty good money each month, with the added benefit of still being related to newspapers, so sure I'd be interested, and it was off-hours, so it'd be perfect, etc...

Um, not so much...

Boy, did I learn quickly to respect people who did that every night...and I knew by my third one that I wasn't going to be one of them.

 

My 11-year-old son and I walk two routes for the free weekly I work for. One route starts across the street, the other we drive to about 15 blocks away. Each takes about 45 to 50 minutes to cover, with about another hour to bag.
We don't have to buy bags or rubber bands, but I've been told the local daily makes its carriers buy them.
Our grand haul is $50.26 every other week, but it serves as some form of exercise for me while adding a little spending money.

 

Hated collecting. But it turns out you didn't have to do it once a week.

Friend of mine did it once a month. Basically had everybody pay in advance.

Sure wish I had thought of that then.

 

Yeah, you'd have a hell of a time getting some little old lady to hand over cash to some of the folks I used to see bagging papers in the parking lot.

 

I can only imagine how far-flung routes are today with declining circulation. The days of peddling around the neighborhood with about 50 papers to deliver are long gone.
Never understood how multi-million dollar corporations could/would put all of the years of experience, all the money and time it took to produce a paper and let it depend on a 14-year-old for the anchor leg.

 

I tried everything.

People suck.

"Collecting" is still my least favorite part of the job. I give everyone credit at first. But, I've got a deli owner in the suburbs who stiffed me, and have had big companies stiff me too.

 

Collecting was a PITFA.

I was very inconsistent at it; I'd go out and collect the night before the paper bill came due so I'd have enough money to give my dad to pay for the papers.

(At least at that time the arrangement for carriers who were minors was their parents signed the contract for the paper route and were responsible for the paper bills.)

A couple times a week I'd collect from a dozen or so houses for walking-around money.

There were quite a few people who would always stall. Assholes.

Knowing now what I didn't know then, I should have just gone to a monthly envelope billing system.