Post Office aircraft?

[cforst513]

I was under the assumption the the US postal service put its mail on FedEx planes and major carriers like american airlines (up until a few weeks ago), but my father is determined to convince me that they have their own fleet. do you guys know anything about this? i would think that it would be one heck of a cushy job -- flying for uncle sam, getting all those benefits after retirement, AND you are almost guaranteed to never run out of mail that needs to be flown elsewhere. help me out!!

 

[Midnight Flyer]

USPS contracted out to several supplimentals, mostly flying 727's. A large percentage of it was Ryan and Express One, and they both painted our planes in the postal colors. I know there were some other supplimentals in there too, but can't quite remember. Most people who didn't know better thought USPS owned the planes and/or that they had their own cargo airline division, etc...but all they did was just contract it all out. Also, regular airlines also carried mail to a certain degree, however, priority mail was mostly Ryan and Express One. The "sort" was in Indianiaolopis (spelling?). FedEx did come in and take over the USPS flying, which screwed A LOT of pilots out of jobs. Rumor is that the USPS are not 100% satisfied with FedEx. And yes, it was a cushy job. You talk about on time performance. Everything ran like clockwork in that operation.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/035364/M/

 

[VaB]

Rumor is that the USPS are not 100% satisfied with FedEx.

Yeah, I've heard that one to. There so dissatisfied in fact, they keep giving us more mail to carry. LOL.

Where did ya hear that?

 

[Midnight Flyer]

Yeah, I've heard that one to. There so dissatisfied in fact, they keep giving us more mail to carry. LOL.

Where did ya hear that?

Oh I've been hearing people talk about that for the last several years or so. I can remember being maxed out some nights leaving Indy. I wonder how FedEx is able to carry all of their packages, in addition to the USPS stuff, and keep it all seperate and in order.

I'd love to be over at FedEx right now; they've got to be one of the most stable airlines (if that even exists), due to their own cargo in addition to the mail.

 

[Midnight Flyer]

Is it possible that FedEx dedicates certain flights to carrying the mail? And none of their own cargo?

I would have no idea how they manage that. Its got to be a big task. But when it comes down to the captain making a decision to bump bump some cargo for whatever reason, what would get bumped? Fedex's own cargo, or throw off some mail. I can remember hearing about federal penalties for bumping mail. I've seen the "postal police" give the loaders and ramp workers a hard time just for letting packages touch the ground.

 

[sqwkvfr]

I was under the assumption the the US postal service put its mail on FedEx planes and major carriers like american airlines (up until a few weeks ago), but my father is determined to convince me that they have their own fleet. do you guys know anything about this? i would think that it would be one heck of a cushy job -- flying for uncle sam, getting all those benefits after retirement, AND you are almost guaranteed to never run out of mail that needs to be flown elsewhere. help me out!!

If you look up some pics of GYR on Airliners.net, you'll see some of the old postal 72s sitting around.

 

[cforst513]

well, if they are fed up with FedEx (no pun intended), i bet there'd be a huge bidding war to get that contract. wonder if it would be more beneficial/cheaper to the USPS to bid out to lots of smaller companies versus putting all your eggs in one basket.

 

[cforst513]

postal police? good lord, hope none of them were watching when i worked the post office docks this past x-mas. parcels would come in and they get thrown all over the place, clear across rooms, and sometimes really hard (if they were small and shaped like a football). talk about a mundane job. it's like moving a pile of dirt from point A to point B with a spoon. nothing changes, no surprises. at least the anthrax scare put a little life in the job!! it was and still is my motivation to stay in college!!

 

[leardrivr]

Well on friday I'm heading out to L.A. to do a USPS contract run to Hono. I love flying for uncle sam!!!!!

 

[cforst513]

What aircraft will you be using, leardrivr? you have quite a laundry list in your profile. do your runs for the post office just take you from LAX to HON and back? or do you do multiple legs to multiple cities?

 

[Wang Chung]

I know there were some other supplimentals in there too, but can't quite remember.

Bringin' back memories from the few months I flew mail to the IND hub before FedEx took over! The "feeder trash" ramp was way off to the side, and the regulars consisted of a Shorts, a couple Convairs, a Sewer Pipe or two, a 1900, and a handful of Vans....if I remember right.

You 727 guys had some serious card-games going on in the lounge.

 

[cforst513]

How would you guys transport the mail? say, in a 727. did you just throw the standard bags of mail into luggage containers and load them that way? i know that the USPS has several containers that hold mail (APC's, OTR's, etc), i'm just not sure if those go on planes or not. also, for the smaller aircraft like the shorts and beech 1900's, how would you guys load the plane w/ mail?

 

[Wang Chung]

for the smaller aircraft like the shorts and beech 1900's, how would you guys load the plane w/ mail?

The big boys are loaded with a series of "cans" that were eached loaded with mail/boxes and individually weighed.

Our Convair was "bulk-loaded" meaning the mail was basically dumped onto the floor of the plane and distributed into 5 or 6 "piles" that were held down with big cargo nets. Loose mail was bagged into big yellow bags. Each pile had a weight associated with it, but I never did the W/B's so I don't really know how that was determined. Since our cargo door was about 7 feet up in the air, the loaders used a belt-loader to get the mail bags and boxes up into the plane. Live cargo (baby chickens, crickets/grasshoppers or whatever the he11 they were) were loaded back towards the tail. Yeah, the occasional package slipped off the top of the belt loader or out the door and took a 7-foot freefall to the ground, but surprisingly not as often as you might think.

 

[cforst513]

yeah, the baby chickens come through quite frequently, more than i thought occurred. we'd bend the corners of the lids up and grab them out of the box and play with them. being a city slicker, i never had the opportunity to play them before. we've had doves come through, and lots of urns too! never saw a body, though that has happened once that i've heard of. bizzare.

 

[F18-FDX]

To answer a couple of questions...

1) No, USPS is not unhappy with FedEx, in fact they couldn't be happier and keep asking us to take more and more mail, we're trying to accommodate. Their "on-time performance" and reliability have skyrocketed after dumping the old fractured and inefficient system. USPS had a big press conference in DC several months back touting how many millions they have saved streamlining the process and how much better their on-time has become. They just "plug-in" to the FedEx network and it gets there, on time, as advertized. This is a standard rumor from guys/companies who are p1ssed off about losing the mail. Don't believe it? Check w/USPS.



2) Yes, we have dedicated "mail" flights, have had for close to 3 years now, and lots of them. We fly standard FedEx freight at night, most of the day flights are USPS only. Flying seems to be about 50/50 day/night for the aircraft that carry mail.

 

[FN FAL]

USPS contracted out to several supplimentals, mostly flying 727's.

FedEx did come in and take over the USPS flying, which screwed A LOT of pilots out of jobs. Rumor is that the USPS are not 100% satisfied with FedEx. And yes, it was a cushy job. You talk about on time performance. Everything ran like clockwork in that operation.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/035364/M/

Midnight, if you need a LOR to get on with a regional, just let me know...we'll make sure you don't ever have to be part of anything where the USPS is not 100% satisfied.

 

[Metro752]

I remember seeing an entire box of credit card letters from Capital One fall off a belt loader going into a 757 headed for Hawaii, one box out of 9000lbs worth of US Mail.

All the purdy white letters absorbed all the nice blue juice on the ramp below

 

[FN FAL]

what's blue juice?

 

[Metro752]

The stuff the the lav guy would pump the lavs full of after he flushes em.

Lavatory Fluid, LavFluid

 

[EOpilot]

You 727 guys had some serious card-games going on in the lounge.

Oh, yes we did. Spades was the game of choice. I suck at bidding, so I only joined in once....and got slaughtered.