Clear The Snow For Rural Mail

Not Carrier's Duty to Break the Roads

It Should be Made Easy for Him to Drive Up to the Boxes

By order of the general superintendent of the free delivery system of the post office department the following notice has been posted at the local post office. It is both timely and important:

1. The department looks to the patrons of the rural free delivery service who are receiving the benefits of the service to use their utmost personal endeavors and also to exert their influence with the road supervisors, or with those officials who are responsible for the condition of the highways, to the end that the roads traveled by rural carriers may be always kept open and in such passable shape that the service can be regularly and punctually performed.

2. Should the regularity of the service be needlessly destroyed as the result of inattention and lack of care bestowed on the highways, the permanent withdrawal of the delivery will very likely result. 

3. Rural letter carriers are required to serve their routes regularly at all seasons of the year and in every kind of weather when it can be done without seriously imperiling their lives or endangering their conveyances or the U.S. mail which is in their custody. 

4. Patrons should clear away the snow drifts, so that carriers can drive up to and reach boxes from their vehicles without dismounting. 

5. It is NOT a part of the carrier's duty to break out the roads after severe snow storms. 

Rural carriers are expected to energetically try to serve their routes even though the conditions may be extremely adverse, and any undue lack of zeal on their part should be promptly brought to the attention of this office for such action as the merits of the case require.