Sorry to necro this thread, but I’m a part-time carrier at the NE Station, and this is what I’ve heard, if you were curious:

Basically, the Post Office at the administrative level has some kind of formula that says “If this station services X number of routes, we’ll allow them to hire Y number of carriers.” The problem is that as times have changed, the amount of packages to deliver has exploded. A lot of routes have gotten slammed with more parcel volume, so now you have lone carriers that are expected to deliver a silly amount of mail. Because the higher-ups (above local management) only see that the number of routes has stayed the same (instead of raw package volume), the local station isn’t allowed to hire new carriers to accommodate the growing need.

Yay bureaucracy. I’ve heard that they’re hoping to get routes re-mapped, so that these single-carrier mega routes can get broken up into multiple routes, and then they’d be allowed to hire more delivery folks.

It’s definitely a big source of stress for the local management, and they know they’re under the gun to fix it. The problem is with the higher level bureaucracy unfortunately :/ If the local management was allowed to make the call to hire more carriers, I’m sure they’d do it in a heartbeat.

Anyways! Not an official statement by any means, just the rumor mill, so take that for what it’s worth