2017 Stamp Out Hunger Branch Results

Here is where we are for the 2017 year:

33 pallets from Main Office (37,356 lbs)

12 pallets from Mount Royal (10,718 lbs)

Fruit of the Vine collected 4,202 lbs from Lakeside

Two Harbors has 4,200 lbs (I didn't include this in the grand total below as we are just looking at local totals right now)

Proctor had 5,170 lbs

Hermantown had 4,740 lbs

We also had $7,234 in cash donated. We took the total and calculated it at 4 lbs per 1$ for a total of 28,936 lbs.

The grand total we are at r is 95,627 lbs including cash donations.

The recorded number for 2016 for Duluth was 78,902 just for food and are at 67,611 lbs this year.

Not too shabby! We were down a little in pounds but next year we can hopefully get the numbers back up. Thank you again for your hard work on this food drive! We are looking forward to seeing how we can improve for next year! If you have any suggestions, please email us! We value your opinion.

Telling Postal Tales

Every letter carrier has stories. Stories about co-workers. Stories about routes. Stories about customers.

A group of international artists based in Los Angeles is putting together a collection of these stories and hopes to create a library of videos and podcasts. The brainchild of renowned artist Christian Moeller, professor and chairman of the Department of Design and Media Arts at the University of California—Los Angeles, and his former student and current research assistant Dasha Orlova, “Postal Tales” intends to tell the stories of letter carriers across the United States. They’ve already made two video posts and the results are beautiful.

If you have stories you would like to share or want to check out other carriers stories, please check out Postal Tales,

Special Delivery - Every Piece, Every Day

The Postal Service goes to great lengths to stick to their mantra, "Every piece, every day".

The Peach Springs, AZ, Post Office has walk-in freezers for food destined for delivery to the bottom of the Grand Canyon by mule train. A string of mules accompanied by a wrangler on horseback makes the 16-mile round trip into the Grand Canyon six days a week. But for the USPS contractor the journey is much longer, picking up mail at Peach Springs, Arizona, and trucking it along 60 miles of a desolate road maintained by the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. The road ends at Hualapai Hilltop, where the eight mile trail to Supai begins. No vehicles are permitted. The mule train will take almost anything you can stick a stamp on. Express mail? They just tie it on the mule and turn him loose and he runs all the way down.

Another Unusual Delivery Method — boat delivery on the Detroit River in Michigan. The JW Westcott is a 45-foot contract mail boat out of Detroit that delivers mail to passing ships while they are underway. The JW Westcott has its own ZIP Code — 48222 which is the only floating zip code. The mail is delivered to the appropriate ships (mainly lake freighters) as they transit the Detroit River, utilizing ropes and buckets.

Mangum, OK. boasts the longest route. A rural carrier travels 182.75 miles daily and delivers to 248 boxes. Could you imagine driving 913.75 miles per week to do your route? That's 47,515 miles per year! That's just crazy!

After hearing about these strange routes, I'm thankful for my rather mundane route and commend those going above and beyond to reach every home in America every day!