ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, December 21, 1995 TAG: 9512210047
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-15 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MALCOLM BRYAN
THIS NEWSPAPER serves the community as a platform for ideas and information, and serves a large role in this region's commercial economy as well.
But from my point of view, as an employee in the circulation department, it is a manufactured and distributed object. To me it may as well be blank, as long as it's on time.
The other morning I read Beth Macy's charming story about one of our distributors, Donnie Akers, who has been delivering papers for us for nearly 50 years. Everything Beth said about Donnie is true, but from our standpoint in the circulation department, not news.
The fact is we have contractual agreements with more than 500 distributors and contract haulers, dozens of whom have carried for more than 20 years. Not all of them are "characters," but each of them has character, in abundance. Not because this enterprise has shown any great wisdom in deciding who to sign for a given route, or because we somehow know how to build character in people, but because the nature of the agreement, and consequently the work itself, demands people of unusually strong depth of character.
These people are bound by their contracts to deliver the newspaper 365 days a year regardless of weather or any other crooked circumstance that life might lay in their path. If they want time off, they must locate, train and pay their substitutes. They are held accountable for errors made by their substitutes as if they had made them themselves. They may pay as much as $50,000 a year for the newspapers and supplies they deliver to their customers. In doing so, they bear a significant part of this company's financial risk. In our core market they now deliver, in addition to their papers, the Wall Street Journal, more than 35 magazine titles, The Expressline, a vast assortment of locally generated advertising materials, catalogues, coupon books, product samples and telephone books.
A comon complaint among carriers is having to deliver something they regard as unimportant. Of course, we believe everything that comes out of this building is vital, as do the people who pay us to have it delivered. I've heard it said that many of our carriers would deliver cinder blocks if they thought their customers wanted them.
The growing complexity of the delivery system that we at "the office" are constantly devising and redivising has made the work of delivering our products more difficult to do right than it has ever been. We can barely keep up with it ourselves.
Added to that are the ordinary human errors that accumulate and multiply throughout the entire, increasingly complex production and distribution process before the newspapers arrive at the carriers' bundle drops. These errors can include missing material, damaged papers, supply shortages, late checks, bad address labels, misrouted materials and late press.
If you ever receive your paper after our 6:30 daily and 7:30 weekend delivery deadlines, it is far more than just likely that it is due to a problem that began in the building. Yet the number of customer complaints called into our offices is lower that it's ever been, less than half what is was just three years ago. Through sheer hustle, these carriers take up a lot of our slack.
The people who are doing this work so well are your neighbors. Nearly all carriers deliver in their own neighborhoods. They are contractors, independent business operators, decorated combat veterans, pastors, teachers, homemakers, single parents, cancer patients, insurance people, salespeople, retirees, music directors and tradespeople. They are alike in that they are all willing to shoulder a tremendous responsibility in order to provide for themselves and their families the kind of lives that they are determined to live.
In the course of pursuing this livelihood, Roanoke Times carriers have stopped crimes, rescued people from burning buildings as well as other hazards, buried family pets found killed on their routes - in short, a thousand kindnesses, some of them heroic. They have had heart attacks trying to deliver motor routes on foot during blizzards and been back on their routes in little more than a week. From intensive care units, they have arranged for substitutes. As a group they are tough, resourceful, almost unstoppable.
I attach as much honor to the work that these people have chosen as to any kind of work. A compelling case can be made that the current Roanoke Times carrier force is the best in the United States. I personally believe it is.
But that says a lot more about this city and this region that it does about this newspaper. We didn't make these people, we found them here. Actually, they found us.
Malcolm Bryan is a metro district circulation manager for The Roanoke Times.
LENGTH: Medium: 85 linesby CNB