Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

I bought a NOS AC Delco Type F petrol pump on ebay for a very reasonable ?35

The pump was despatched from Italy to my home in Argyll.

However when it arrived at our local sorting office the address had gone missing from the package - only our postcode (zip code) remained. So who should receive this unaddressed parcel?

Our Postman opened the parcel and did a Google search on Type F AC pumps - which highlighted Lotus.

The parcel was then safely delivered

Each holiday season I tip our postal guy. Sounds like you have a one cut from the same cloth as ours.
When someone in the service industry goes the extra mile I sure do appreciate it.

To be fair having a UK postcode narrows it down on average to no more than 15 dwellings.

Here in France I share mine with about 20000, were I to live in a grand ville you could add a zero to that!

Tip, dont use code postals on a shatnav in France

La poste has also identified me from just a postcode but I suspect that my factrice (postwoman) was the one who knew who.

I have a question. In the US, in rural areas the postal workers drive RHD cars/trucks. In other parts of the world where you are RHD do the postal drivers use LHD cars/trucks?

Where I live is a hamlet of 50 plus properties all with the same postcode - including several farms.

The Postman thought the pump might be for a tractor or similar - until he searched Google.

Edit xxxxxxxxx

I've just checked the Parcel Force website which lists 84 properties sharing our Postcode

Tahoe wrote: In other parts of the world where you are RHD do the postal drivers use LHD cars/trucks?

Cars....Trucks....???.....what are you talking about.......

Our postmen here catch a London Red Bus to near their destinations and then walk their rounds.

types26/36 wrote:

Tahoe wrote: In other parts of the world where you are RHD do the postal drivers use LHD cars/trucks?

Cars....Trucks....???.....what are you talking about.......

Oops!!!!!!! I should have thought of that. In my area it would take them 2-3 days to deliver the mail on a bike. As it is I sometimes don't see our mail until 6 p.m. and they still aren't finished. I think it's about 8 miles from the post office to my house, and there is only one person delivering in our entire area so the vehicle of choice is either a Subaru or a newer Jeep JK.

It seems it takes all sorts, look at these pictures.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=mail+ ... 60&bih=613

I think deliveries direct from the vehicle into your house mail box on the street side with a red flag to signify delivery is / was a unique American approach I experienced when I lived in Houston in the 70's. Never seen it elsewhere in the world

cheers
Rohan

rgh0 wrote:I think deliveries direct from the vehicle into your house mail box on the street side with a red flag to signify delivery is / was a unique American approach I experienced when I lived in Houston in the 70's. Never seen it elsewhere in the world

cheers
Rohan

I think the red flag is to indicate to the postman that there is something to be collected, rather than vice versa.

billwill wrote: I think the red flag is to indicate to the postman that there is something to be collected, rather than vice versa.

Bill is correct. If you live in an older area the postman will collect mail from your mailbox on the curbside if you raise the flag. They'll lower it once they have taken the mail. They don't do anything to signal they have delivered the mail, you just have to learn when they come and check the box, they don't put the mail through your door as in the UK.

If you live in an newer area they do combined mailboxes to reduce the delivery overhead. Normally on the entrance to the neighborhood they be a matrix of boxes one for each house in that area of the neighbor hood and you have to collect your mail from these. These have a postbox for outgoing mail.

UK post codes cover from 1 to (usually) not more then 40 delivery points, however, apartment blocks may have many more delivery points on the same code.
The UK has never fully utilised the full code, which was unique to every delivery point, in other words every house had a couple of extra characters on the end; iirc this was designed-in right from the beginning of code use, when codes were trialled in Preston and some other place.

As far as I know none of the European Postal Administrations have taken the sensible step of having the driver sit on the "wrong" side of the vehicle, allowing him/her get out of the vehicle directly onto the footpath (sidewalk) rather than into on-coming traffic with, unfortunately, sometimes fatal results. A financial decision based upon resale vehicle value vs. injury and loss of life insurance pay-outs.

Pedal cycles were phased out a couple of years ago by Royal Mail by a bizarre (and very costly decision) which was rushed through prior to privatisation.

The amount of mail which is posted with a less than full address is staggering, even more staggering is the number of successfully delivered items, as touched on above. I cannot see how this really expensive process will continue now that Royal Mail is no longer a public service and at some point mail with a less than full address will be binned, or packets/parcels sent for destruction/auction.

I was supposed to have forgotten about all this crap 3 years, 1 month and 21 days ago.

Enjoy it while it lasts; Canada post now plans to eliminate door to door delivery over the next 5 years replacing with those multi (eg50) unit mailbox things on the streets as seen in newer subdivisions, tough luck for the grannies on walkers . And who cares about traffic issues while people stop on the way home to get the mail. Yep the union sure set the stage for this, but mail has dropped off to almost nothing anyway.
Didn't the past Post Canada lady from Newfoundland move to head up the UK post a few years ago?

Hmm... Won't be ringing twice anymore..

Have to pick up my lotus parts at the local store/post office anyway.




Edit:
Found this...An older headline:
"Former Canada Post CEO under fire for calling British government pay system ?hopelessly broken?
Royal Mail head Moya Greene makes headlines"

I still have fond memories of my student employment by the post office where I footslogged round housing estates delivering (mainly) Xmas cards for a couple of years. 40yrs later though not much seems to have changed except they now have shopping trolleys to keep the letters in whereas I had to to carry the bag - oh, and they have nice red jackets as well.

Email etc seems to have removed a lot of routine communications from the the postmans burden and most of what we receive is either junk mail or small packets for stuff bought on ebay. UK letterboxes are not really designed for packet delivery though so the junk mail gets shoved through followed by a card telling us to collect the packets from the sorting office. I've been musing about buying a US style mailbox and if I could get one that automatically shredded the junk mail I'd be very happy