Park'n'Loop in the Rurals ...

[RedBagMan]

... was introduced up our end last week ... it's been an interesting couple of weeks

Me personally ... get on with it and try - but with frame changes, dutyholder changes, holidays, rota weeks, days off - and the loop layouts sorted by someone who hasn't been in our villages for months/years ... some of the new duties have been "tested" with them going over between 2hrs and 6.5hrs

Anyone out there with any views/experiences of P&L in rural areas ??? I can't get my head round it at the moment insofar as they're trying to shoehorn an idea which admittedly might work well in towns with rows of terraces/compact estates etc ... but in a rural setting just seems daft ...

Any views ??

[Chelseablue]

Work to you're time ,they'll soon get the message

[dvbuk55]

Our area has several rural areas and more than 1 P&L has two villages. They consist of ft and pt teams and split shift patterns one starting at 7 to double prep and 1 coming in later at 8.45 or 9 to deliver packets. The influx of greater numbers of parcels and packets has created an imbalance over the last 3 years.

[mickeymacca]

We are just about to go through the same in our office. As we are about 15 miles from DO we are having to take vans home ( there are four duties and 2 vans). Not sure how this is going to work when people have days of go sick etc. I foresee so many issues, and they are trying to rush it through before the end of the financial year, should be an interesting summer!!

[NewPostieUK]

We've had P&L about a year but the rurals haven't been touched. I don't really see how it could work on a rural, a passenger can't walk around farms that are 3 or 4 miles apart.

[Judgee]

We've had P&L about a year but the rurals haven't been touched. I don't really see how it could work on a rural, a passenger can't walk around farms that are 3 or 4 miles apart.

Same in our office. Rurals were ringfenced and left untouched when we had revision and the duties never went up for resign. Much to the annoyance of the rest of the office!

Really can't see it working on many rurals, with some drops miles apart how would that work with looping?

[tommytucka]

... was introduced up our end last week ... it's been an interesting couple of weeks

Me personally ... get on with it and try - but with frame changes, dutyholder changes, holidays, rota weeks, days off - and the loop layouts sorted by someone who hasn't been in our villages for months/years ... some of the new duties have been "tested" with them going over between 2hrs and 6.5hrs

Anyone out there with any views/experiences of P&L in rural areas ??? I can't get my head round it at the moment insofar as they're trying to shoehorn an idea which admittedly might work well in towns with rows of terraces/compact estates etc ... but in a rural setting just seems daft ...

Any views ??

Oldham?

[arnold cheshire]

We've had P&L about a year but the rurals haven't been touched. I don't really see how it could work on a rural, a passenger can't walk around farms that are 3 or 4 miles apart.

singleton duties

[Dorset Plodder]

Problem in our particular office is that they've just stuffed two existing duties into one van and expected it to work!
I've done P & L in heavy built up areas with minimum number of parking up points, and they seem well suited to P & L. 1 guy going one way with LWT & 2 bags and the the other walking in the opposite direction, both ending up at the van. I can see the logic of this type of duty.

With, what I'd call Semi-Rural duties, it seems better to have the Driver zooming around the outer "fringes" of both duties delivering to those isolated farms, roads with spread out house etc plus those with massive driveways. The passenger can then concentrate on a more concentrated area of the town/village centre. It requires a lot of liaison between the two, and normally entails the passenger ringing the driver when he's ready for his next couple of bags. The Driver tends to end up with ANY packets that can't be reasonably squeezed in, normally all the specials and probably most of the tracked. The Passenger ends up with the greater amount of delivery points and the greater chunk of the walking.

On some Fully Rural duties it's just impractical to use P & L. Basically they haven't changed it's one Man & Van. I don't know why RM didn't just bite the bullet and replace every Pushbike with a van. They're obviously not bothered about saving money or they'd not have forced P & L through, or got rid of all the Pushbikes.

[NewPostieUK]

The Driver tends to end up with ANY packets that can't be reasonably squeezed in, normally all the specials and probably most of the tracked. The Passenger ends up with the greater amount of delivery points and the greater chunk of the walking.

Isn't that the whole point? The driver does packets that don't fit into the bags. How else are they going to get done? He cuts off to do specials by 1pm, large packets and so has smaller loops to allow this.

[Dorset Plodder]

Isn't that the whole point? The driver does packets that don't fit into the bags. How else are they going to get done? He cuts off to do specials by 1pm, large packets and so has smaller loops to allow this.

That's meant to be the point...however I've been on P & Ls where the person that prepted it filled one of the bags with a single large parcel he said, "I thought it would save us time if you delivered it as you went past" Yeah more like save you some time. I've seen bungees used on LWTs so you can carry a few bulkier parcels (which I think is a good idea).

I've also been the "Driver" when the passenger tried to throw out nearly all his "Reasonable" sized packets, especially if they needed a signature, just to save him knocking on the door (and wasting HIS valuable time). The main problem with P & L is it requires Posties to work as a team, which something very few of them have any experience of, or and wish to try. IMHO the majority of Posties are just selfish bastards who try and off load as much of their work onto someone else as they can.