Rural Letter Carrier

Rural letter carriers are United States Postal Service and Canada Post employees who deliver mail in what are traditionally considered rural and suburban areas of the United States and Canada. Before Rural Free Delivery (RFD), rural citizens of the US and Canada were required to go to the post office in the cities to get their mail.

The rural carrier work force is divided into the following categories of employees:

For administrative and reporting purposes, regular rural carriers who serve on an established rural route on the basis of triweekly, five, five-and-a-half, or six days in a service week, are considered full-time employees.

Part-time flexible rural carriers (PTFs) are those substitutes or rural carrier associates appointed following an assignment posting. These employees provide service on regular and auxiliary routes as directed by management.

The following employees provide service on established regular and auxiliary rural routes in the absence of regular or auxiliary rural carriers. This service may be as leave replacement and/or covering vacant regular routes pending the selection of regular rural carriers, as an auxiliary assistant or as an auxiliary route carrier:

Persons hired prior to 1981 to serve an auxiliary rural route without time limitation.

Assistant Rural Carriers (ARCs) were added to the 2016 contract. They primarily assist with package delivery on weekends & holidays, but can also be used to perform standard route duties on Saturdays.

Much support for the introduction of a nationwide rural mail delivery service came from The National Grange of the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, the nation's oldest agricultural organization. Formerly, residents of rural areas had to either travel to a distant Post office to pick up their mail, or else pay for delivery by a private carrier. Free mail delivery began in American cities in 1863 with a limited scope. Shortly afterwards, rural citizens began petitioning for equal consideration. Postmaster General John Wanamaker first suggested rural free deliver (RFD) of mail in the United States in his annual report for fiscal year 1891.

...
Wikipedia