mail volumes

[joeboy]

for the last 5-10 years, royal mail have been spouting on, that letter traffic is decreasing continuously, that (BEING THE TRUTH)!!!!! should there be any letters left to deliver?????, i reckon, it's the old adage, if you keep saying it long enough, then people will believe it, does anybody still believe them?????,........... a knackered postie!!!!!

[hans solo]

nope because if we lose 10% every year when do we deliver 0% cant wait

[Straight4ward]

They are right, letters are down, but they are being selective about the period they use and are omitting to mention the growth in packets.

Letters have declined from their peak in 2005 of 84 million a day to around 68 million last year.
However, this level is closer to 1995/96 when we were delivering 70 million daily.

Incidentally, RM forecast letters to fall to 41 million daily in 2015.
Also as July/August Courier tells us while letters fell by 6% in 2011, UK parcel numbers increased by 6% and parcels now account for half our profit.

The problem for RM is that growth is now coming from the items that are more problematic to sort and handle and take up more space and more time to deliver. It’s quick and easy to shove letters through a letterbox but much more time consuming (and therefore expensive for RM) to knock on doors to deliver outsized packets.

Don’t know about you, but it is the packets that are knackering me everyday not the letters.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

nope because if we lose 10% every year when do we deliver 0% cant wait

Not in your lifetime, hans, that is for sure...

A 10% drop annually for 10 years does not result in 0 letters to deliver any more. ;)

As regard the decling letter volumes, I very much doubt it includes any of the DSA crap that comes back into the RM system for us to deliver from our selectively competitive competitors (of which I would hazzard a guess there are increasing amounts), the figure is proabably based solely on Royal Mail stamped and company francing machined letters.

[NewPostieUK]

I'm more bothered about mail volume per postman. Royal Mail might well be delivering less letters than when I started 4 years ago, but I personally am delivering MORE. Duties have been broken up and shared out so the remaining duties have MORE.

[eastie]

10 years ago when I started I had 3 bags on my delivery.
Now I have 9 bags.
Yes the letters have dropped in total but what they dont tell you is that the amount of postmen delivering from the same office has dropped by a bigger percentage than the letters .
My delivery office had 40 postmen and now has 32 postmen thats a drop of 20% doing an area that has increased by 2,000 addresses in 10 years.
I expect we are delivering the same amount of letters because the rounds have got bigger

[TheCobra]

10 years ago when I started I had 3 bags on my delivery.
Now I have 9 bags.
Yes the letters have dropped in total but what they dont tell you is that the amount of postmen delivering from the same office has dropped by a bigger percentage than the letters .
My delivery office had 40 postmen and now has 32 postmen thats a drop of 20% doing an area that has increased by 2,000 addresses in 10 years.
I expect we are delivering the same amount of letters because the rounds have got bigger

I think you are probably correct here. It's just Royal Mail massaging figures so we all 'get on with it and try harder to be better employees'. Send out a negative message to get us poor souls fearing for our jobs and working harder, it's a tried and trusted management tactic I would assume.

[Mr Rush]

Someone linked to a graph on the Postal Heritage site a while back in response to Courier's claim that figures for past mail volumes weren't available. Essentially:

Letters have declined from their peak in 2005 of 84 million a day to around 68 million last year.
However, this level is closer to 1995/96 when we were delivering 70 million daily.

As has been pointed out, what is at a historic low is the number of Royal Mail personnel delivering it.

Edit: Found it http://postalheritage.org.uk/page/lette ... -1920-2010

[WHITEANT]

Ihave never beleived anything the po speil out about volumes of mail ,in our office they started putting the daily figures up (the time when firms are on summer hols )telling us about the drastic fall in mail .All of a sudden the figures arent up and wont be up till the same time next year

[rhino49]

I'm more bothered about mail volume per postman. Royal Mail might well be delivering less letters than when I started 4 years ago, but I personally am delivering MORE. Duties have been broken up and shared out so the remaining duties have MORE.

Well put - we have had a corresponding ...indeed premature in many cases ... reduction in delivery staff and duties. By anyones, even Royal Mail's calculations, that means that for the most part we are working much harder than ten years ago.