As a comparison, $17.40 is what a rural carrier starts with the us postal service. [1]
After a strike in the '70s postal workers could bargain. This has led to stable, unglorified, mid pay jobs. The bargaining was and is key.
Now, if you sign up as a City carrier you can (with luck) become "regular" in 90 days. You will get 23 paid days off, eligible for federal pool health insurance (quite good 2m pool) where you pay 25% premium, never work Sundays, guaranteed 40 hours work a week, no email, stress, home by 5pm.
I was looking at the job board here in Canada and saw a rural postal delivery job. It said it paid $15,000 but $7,500 of that was for vehicle expenses. You need your own vehicle with a plug able to plug in the post office light for the roof.
I can't see how this would appeal to anyone or how it is even legal. If you worked an eight hour day that's only $3.60 per hour.
Rural in usa does not necessarily mean "rural" all rural routes i know use postal trucks. They dont have any businessess and share an office with business routes
A lot of RFD and there rural delivery is done by local folks with a magnetic sticker on the side of the car that says postal service. In my experience it's all mothers with no other job who can pick up some extra cash while the kids are at school.
Which doesn't contradict your statement that "all rural routes i know use postal trucks", just says that conditions are different in different areas.
FWIW , where my vacation house is, the postman also delivers Amazon packages and wears no uniform while at home in Palo Alto the postman, Fedex etc all have uniforms.
Not gunna lie I've always wanted to be an urban postal carrier. When I was flunking high school adults would ask me what I would do if I didn't go to college. They weren't happy when I said "postal worker." I didn't do college and now I'm a programmer. I still fantasize about a low stress job like that, maybe later, when you I've socked away more money...
For a while the key to a successful pension plan was to assume that the stock market will grow at some unrealistic number, and if your numbers did not add up, just throw in another unrealistic number to boost the forecast.
As it currently stands, the global economy is awash in capital, so low rates and tepid economic growth are here to stay.
Outside of Thomas Picketty no one is able to run a large-scale investment fund that consistently generates annual returns of 10%+ year-over-year.
Curious who in the USPS isn't delivering on Sundays when their little trucks are everywhere on Sunday. Still comparing this to Uber is a bit absurd. Uber is contract for hire/etc - there is little more needed than being clean of record and signing up. Good luck getting into the USPS. Plus with Uber and similar your workload is what you make of it.
So while Uber is on many people's shit list we must not make comparisons which are in effect meaningless. Instead we need to compare them to direct competitors, the other for hire services and other private delivery options on the low end. The higher end open delivery might be FedEx Home, FedEx and UPS are similar to USPS, you have to first get past the hiring process and live under someone's schedule and tight rules
New carriers are "temporary" until a route is open. They do the sunday and holiday deliveries. They get fired every 360 days and after 5 days they get rehired.
Thats why i said "lucky" there is a two tier structure
After a strike in the '70s postal workers could bargain. This has led to stable, unglorified, mid pay jobs. The bargaining was and is key.
Now, if you sign up as a City carrier you can (with luck) become "regular" in 90 days. You will get 23 paid days off, eligible for federal pool health insurance (quite good 2m pool) where you pay 25% premium, never work Sundays, guaranteed 40 hours work a week, no email, stress, home by 5pm.
[1] https://wp1-ext.usps.gov/sap/bc/webdynpro/sap/hrrcf_a_unreg_...
Choose state and "delivery"