Royal Mail - how does it all work?

[telstarbox]

Had a few questions about Royal Mail if anyone knows the answers!

How do the logistics work between the Mail Centres? Is there a hub and spoke model or is there enough volume for a lorry to run between every pair of Mail Centres every night?

For the daily delivery, do the small vans just go out for one round, or do they come back to the depot and go out for a second round on a different route?

What are the criteria for whether a delivery is done by walking with a buggy or a van?

 

[JoeGJ1984]

I don't know any of the answers, but I presume there are smaller mail centres covering smaller areas? There is one in Shrewsbury where I live (and I once did a Cristmas casual job) that's lot listed on the link above. And they dealt with the SY, TF and LD postcodes (Shrewsbury, Telford and (?)Llandrindod Wells) that went as far afield as South Wales, but I presume some smaller offices dealt with the mail in the above areas that are far away from Shrewsbury?

And I had to sort outgoing mail (to non-SY TF and LD postcodes) into (I think) three groups by the first two letters of the postcode, and one group went by air and had the north of Scotland and some of the southwestern areas of the UK.

There were also certain areas that used a 'drop bag fitting' - I don't know what that is.

There were also a few three-letter acronyms that I never knew what they stood for; PDC was incoming mail (in this case to SY, TF and LD), and there was a place to put mis-sorts called OPS. Also DBF for Drop Bag Fitting.

I wonder (speculating here) if there is a 'hierarchy' where a mail centre covers a large area, and has several small centres covering smaller areas within the larger area (and perhaps smaller centres again covering smaller areas)? So that at the highest 'level' (i.e. largest area) all mail from somewhere in area A to area B are all 'concentrated' into one 'delivery' from area A mail centre to area B mail centre (perhaps by road via lorry, perhaps via air)?

 

[telstarbox]

I thought that some smaller Mail Centres had closed since 2000?

 

[SteveM70]

Not sure about the movements between mail centres, but all the mass mailing operators (eg bank, credit card statements) print in a pre-sorted sequence that are then bagged up at delivery office level, in return for a discount on the price. It used to be imaginatively called mailsort back in the day, don’t know if it still is

 

[Peter Mugridge]

It's a hub and spoke model.

Post from here in Epsom goes via Feltham before going on to the Willesden distribution centre; the incoming post does the same route in reverse.

However, if there is a consistently high volume between any two centres which are at the end of relatively nearby spokes from a given hub, they will set up a dedicated run for that - but it does need to be a fairly high volume.

 

[Mojo]

For the daily delivery, do the small vans just go out for one round, or do they come back to the depot and go out for a second round on a different route?

What are the criteria for whether a delivery is done by walking with a buggy or a van?

It depends on the round I think.

Many routes don’t even get a van or transport of their own - I’ve seen plenty of occasions a van drop post off in the red boxes attached to post boxes or the grey standalone boxes, and then the Delivery Officer comes round after and empties them for local delivery.

My dad worked as a Mail Delivery Officer for a short while (a few weeks, in between jobs) about ten years ago. His round was deemed close enough to the main sorting office that neither a cart, drop offs by a van, nor any other transport was provided. He was given a shoulder bag and expected to lug all the post for the round with him from the moment he left the sorting office in the morning.