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What's a daily average for your walk?

Postal workers discussion forum. Discuss the day to day life in a Blue Shirt.
insomniak
Posts: 14
Joined: 08 Jun 2024, 14:34
Gender: Male

What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by insomniak »

The walk I've been covering the past few weeks has approx 650-700 addresses (split across 14 different roads)

Today I had:

A days worth of mail including 400 polling card letters (I'd already done 700 yesterday)
5 x 1pm Special Deliveries
65 x tracked (at least half of which were oversized)
A dozen or so other parcels too big to post
3 x pillar boxes

Sorting wasn't finished till almost 10am, so didn't get out till around 10.30am.

I was just wondering what the average residential walk work load is at the moment?

If your office has moved the hours forward recently how has it been affecting your rounds?
Mr Rush
Posts: 3296
Joined: 05 Aug 2011, 14:27
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by Mr Rush »

insomniak wrote:
11 Jun 2024, 20:35
If your office has moved the hours forward recently how has it been affecting your rounds?
It's been suspiciously super-duper dead this week for our new 1115 :thumbdown dispatch time so most walks are getting out well in advance and therefore the office is rapidly clearing, whereas previously almost no-one was achieving the ridiculous bagged-up-by-0930 time quoted by management every morning. :hmmmm Dare I suggest they're trying to build a headstart before the resignations start flying?
The machine stops.
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12137
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by SpacePhoenix »

Mr Rush wrote:
12 Jun 2024, 00:17
insomniak wrote:
11 Jun 2024, 20:35
If your office has moved the hours forward recently how has it been affecting your rounds?
It's been suspiciously super-duper dead this week for our new 1115 :thumbdown dispatch time so most walks are getting out well in advance and therefore the office is rapidly clearing, whereas previously almost no-one was achieving the ridiculous bagged-up-by-0930 time quoted by management every morning. :hmmmm Dare I suggest they're trying to build a headstart before the resignations start flying?
New network times don't kick in until next week
LouBarlow
Posts: 4709
Joined: 15 Oct 2007, 18:56

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by LouBarlow »

Did just under 15 miles walking today on a town round, but it was only an average day really, taking poll cards where we were going. I don’t tend to worry to much about total number of calls as it is rare that we get anything over a 50% call rate on any given day. A lot less on Monday and Tuesday.

Edit - lol misread the OP.
jasongray91
Posts: 8
Joined: 10 Mar 2015, 16:46
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by jasongray91 »

On a van share, combined 1628 properties.
Tracked, 3 days @ 150-170, 2 days @ 190-220, 1 day of 100-120
Mail tends to be 1 tray of sequence and 2-4 trays of large flats. Once a week i'll have 2 trays of sequence.
Usually have 1-3 D2D. Normally have 10-15 specials, about half being 1PM
Almost impossible to get done on time most days
kazardaimenu
Posts: 1391
Joined: 13 Apr 2022, 19:11
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by kazardaimenu »

Had about 1600 calls on my walk, would take between 4 or 5 hours depending on parcels and collections most days so could get done in our time usually but any uptick in mail and we would have to leave stuff. Been doing DPR recently and the amount coming through is crazy, PDA route estimating around 7 hours delivery and that’s with leaving stuff in.
LouBarlow
Posts: 4709
Joined: 15 Oct 2007, 18:56

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by LouBarlow »

Bounced_Czech wrote:
12 Jun 2024, 18:13
LouBarlow wrote:
12 Jun 2024, 17:11
Did just under 15 miles walking today on a town round, but it was only an average day really, taking poll cards where we were going. I don’t tend to worry to much about total number of calls as it is rare that we get anything over a 50% call rate on any given day. A lot less on Monday and Tuesday.

Edit - lol misread the OP.
Do you have a rough time that would have taken today please? As in from the first delivery point to the last?
Thanks
5 hours with a 20 minute break. We finished dead on time. Again, it was a light day though.
SpacePhoenix
MAIL CENTRES/PROCESSING
Posts: 12137
Joined: 12 Nov 2008, 17:03
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by SpacePhoenix »

kazardaimenu wrote:
12 Jun 2024, 18:49
Had about 1600 calls on my walk, would take between 4 or 5 hours depending on parcels and collections most days so could get done in our time usually but any uptick in mail and we would have to leave stuff. Been doing DPR recently and the amount coming through is crazy, PDA route estimating around 7 hours delivery and that’s with leaving stuff in.
Think we must have had a very high forecast last night for the number of small packets. Small packet setups all over the place.
jasongray91 wrote:
12 Jun 2024, 18:36
On a van share, combined 1628 properties.
Tracked, 3 days @ 150-170, 2 days @ 190-220, 1 day of 100-120
Mail tends to be 1 tray of sequence and 2-4 trays of large flats. Once a week i'll have 2 trays of sequence.
Usually have 1-3 D2D. Normally have 10-15 specials, about half being 1PM
Almost impossible to get done on time most days
That once a week with 2 trays is probably where a load of mail has hit the 5 day limit with the DTS system and has been automatically released
postmanzach
Posts: 515
Joined: 18 Jul 2011, 15:01
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by postmanzach »

Getting out the door by 11 finishing around 5
Smoothbackground
Posts: 1274
Joined: 21 Sep 2023, 20:01
Gender: Female

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by Smoothbackground »

kazardaimenu wrote:
12 Jun 2024, 18:49
Had about 1600 calls on my walk, would take between 4 or 5 hours depending on parcels and collections most days so could get done in our time usually but any uptick in mail and we would have to leave stuff. Been doing DPR recently and the amount coming through is crazy, PDA route estimating around 7 hours delivery and that’s with leaving stuff in.
The volume is crazy at ours too. The last fortnight has seemed busier than Christmas for us on DPRs.

How many stops/DPs did you have on your 7-hour route? Was it geographically spread out rather than being, say, six or eight adjoining walks? Managers often think any and every York of large equates to an hour’s work without understanding the factors involved — how many walks’ parcels are involved, is it small and postable or typical DPR format parcels (or a mix of both), are you going to apartments, etc, etc.

I am now starting to use the RO+N estimate as my cut-off – i will optimise (but not confirm) if it looks like it is getting tight to see how long RO+N says the route will take, and if it’s too much I stop scanning any more parcels and will remove any outliers I can obviously see to get the delivery span where it needs to be (we have the “privilege” of routing up our own DPRs so have the luxury of doing this, but I know from my previous time as an agency worker with RM that other DOs often have indoor staff doing the initial DPR scanning).
kazardaimenu
Posts: 1391
Joined: 13 Apr 2022, 19:11
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by kazardaimenu »

Had about 120 on a 7hr delivery all pretty spread out. Would be easy to complete in under that if you knew the areas but RON complicates things so much. You find yourself driving up a street then back down it when you could just cross the road with a parcel. We scan our own and that certainly helps when on a familiar route.
Smoothbackground
Posts: 1274
Joined: 21 Sep 2023, 20:01
Gender: Female

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by Smoothbackground »

kazardaimenu wrote:
21 Jun 2024, 21:38
Had about 120 on a 7hr delivery all pretty spread out. Would be easy to complete in under that if you knew the areas but RON complicates things so much. You find yourself driving up a street then back down it when you could just cross the road with a parcel. We scan our own and that certainly helps when on a familiar route.
120 is a decent amount. We have a guy at ours who does no more than 60! always spend five minutes scrolling down through the route addresses and then looking at the map view to see what refinements I can make. The RO+N works on a “loop” or “arcing” basis and can be very inefficient. On a bad day I end up writing out little notes by hand of which order to do certain stops in.
TopperGas
Posts: 3460
Joined: 13 Feb 2021, 22:46
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by TopperGas »

Smoothbackground wrote:
21 Jun 2024, 21:57
kazardaimenu wrote:
21 Jun 2024, 21:38
Had about 120 on a 7hr delivery all pretty spread out. Would be easy to complete in under that if you knew the areas but RON complicates things so much. You find yourself driving up a street then back down it when you could just cross the road with a parcel. We scan our own and that certainly helps when on a familiar route.
120 is a decent amount. We have a guy at ours who does no more than 60! always spend five minutes scrolling down through the route addresses and then looking at the map view to see what refinements I can make. The RO+N works on a “loop” or “arcing” basis and can be very inefficient. On a bad day I end up writing out little notes by hand of which order to do certain stops in.
Just set the penultimate stop at the address furthest away from the office and it then does it in a straight line rather than a loop.
postslippete
Posts: 4188
Joined: 14 Jul 2014, 16:27
Gender: Male

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by postslippete »

The average 'going' rate in our office is 20 tracked parcels an hour. That's what they will pay someone for taking any additional Tracked items as overtime on a walk. Obviously, it's different if you are delivering items that cover a whole postcode area.

However, I sometimes use this metric when managers start trying to be clever to determine how much work we can set aside. So if we start the delivery at say 10am and we need to finish by 3pm then theoretically we should only be able to deliver around 100 Tracked parcels if we only have one van between us. If there are substantially more parcels than this (which is often the case over the two walks) plus mail and everything else that needs to be delivered, then that would give me a good reason to leave more loops. The alternative for getting more work completed on the shared walk would be for the manager to give us a van each. This suits me as I work much better on my own and there is less stopping and waiting around for each other to finish. :whistle
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
Smoothbackground
Posts: 1274
Joined: 21 Sep 2023, 20:01
Gender: Female

Re: What's a daily average for your walk?

Post by Smoothbackground »

TopperGas wrote:
21 Jun 2024, 22:11
Smoothbackground wrote:
21 Jun 2024, 21:57
kazardaimenu wrote:
21 Jun 2024, 21:38
Had about 120 on a 7hr delivery all pretty spread out. Would be easy to complete in under that if you knew the areas but RON complicates things so much. You find yourself driving up a street then back down it when you could just cross the road with a parcel. We scan our own and that certainly helps when on a familiar route.
120 is a decent amount. We have a guy at ours who does no more than 60! always spend five minutes scrolling down through the route addresses and then looking at the map view to see what refinements I can make. The RO+N works on a “loop” or “arcing” basis and can be very inefficient. On a bad day I end up writing out little notes by hand of which order to do certain stops in.
Just set the penultimate stop at the address furthest away from the office and it then does it in a straight line rather than a loop.
I’ll def give that a go today, thanks.