Published: January 07, 2007 12:50 am         

A day in a life of a letter carrier

Receiving friendly car or truck honks, sorting and delivering mail and walking and driving through Greenville neighborhoods is all part of a normal day in a life of USPS letter carrier Danny Burns.

For almost 29 years, Burns has been delivering mail to people throughout North Texas. And he has been delivering mail on the same Greenville route for more than 18 years.

And he said, even after 29 years, he still loves his job.

“It’s still fun. I still enjoy it. I’m going to keep doing it until I don’t enjoy it,” he said. “When I don’t want to get up and come to work in morning that’s when I’ll probably say ‘that’s it’. I’ve always heard when you enjoy what you do, it’s probably not work.”

Burns said the people living on his mail route make his job great.

“They all like me, and I like them,” he said simply. “I don’t mind getting personal with my people because I see them pretty much five days a week anyway. We might as well be like family. That’s the way I look at it.”

Even the dogs appear to like Burns because in all the years he has been delivering mail, he has never once been bitten. But just in case, he carries a small can of pepper spray on his bag.

“They come running at you, but you stomp your foot and yell at them and they usually take off the other way with their tail between their legs,” he said.

One day, Burns said several dogs even followed him around for his entire route.

“I drive 23 miles a day, and they followed me the whole time,” he explained. “And they knew which way I turned. It was crazy.”

He said he walks about one-third of his route and drives the rest.

It takes Burns about 6.5 hours to deliver the normal 2,000 to 2,500 pieces of mail every day — though if he has a set of full-coverage advertisements, which go to every house, to deliver, it takes longer.

“Most times you don’t stop at every house,” he said. “You probably hit 75 or 80 percent every day.”

But before hitting the streets, Burns usually spends an 1.5 hours putting up and sorting him mail for delivery.

Burns — who is one of about 28 letter carriers who serve the residents of Greenville and the surrounding area — said he’s seen some crazy things during his career including a dead armadillo in a mailbox.

But the one story that really sticks out in his mind involves a typewriter.

“Someone was on a typewriter and had gotten one key off on the keyboard and got this garboldy-goop you get. We went to a typewriter and figured out where the letter went and delivered it,” he said.

He said doing the job to the best of his ability is very important to him even if it takes longer.

And that includes parking his vehicle — safely of course — and climbing out to deliver mail even if one of the people on his route has left a trash can or parked a car in front of the mailbox — which, by the way, is one of the most annoying things on the route, Burns said.

But Burns joked about one of his marks of excellence.

“I haven’t run over any mailboxes yet, so I’m doing good,” he said with a laugh and grin.