anyone have any experience with early morning paper routes?

SWMBO is currently a stay at home mom, and we recently stumbled upon a classified ad in our local paper (small town, published twice weekly) where a larger, bigger city paper (published daily with a sunday edition) is looking for a delivery person. Early morning, must provide own transportation yadda yadda, roughly three hours a day, and around $1600 a month gross pay.

If she can do this before I go to work and she puts the kiddo on the bus, this just may really help. Thing is big city paper is roughly 90 mins away and if you have to go there to get the papers, it isn't worth doing.

My brothers did this in high school. By the time you figure expenses, I doubt you are going to make much. Bright side, lots of coupons on Sunday.

did it, takes up to much time for little pay and rough on you vehicle, I would say that 3 hours would be more like 5. anyway good luck.

It sucks. It sucks hard. I did it a few years ago. Seven days a week, started at 2am, ended between 4 and 8 depending on the day (the Sunday paper took forever). I was once chased around the neighborhood by some likely high psychopath. It's murder on cars. To top it all off, the pay sucked. Grossing $1600 a month would have required me to work a route twice as big. They took $3 per complaint off our checks. A lot of people complain just to get another paper for coupons and such. I was also constantly tired because of the crap hours. I had to drive to the warehouse and put the papers together (insert ads and such, bag it if it was wet. They charged you for the bags too, and they aren't cheap) then I had to drive to my route.

On the plus side, my route was in my own neighborhood so I bought an adult tricycle and used it to deliver and save on gas. It was the most physically fit I'd ever been.

The one I did in high school was terrible. In my case the way they got around labor laws involved essentially me buying all the papers from them and then I had to collect from the people on the route to recoup the costs of the papers, rubber bands, plastic bags and such and hopefully make a profit.

My cost vs the subscription price was about 3 cents per day per paper difference. On a rainy day just over a penny per paper went to plastic bags.

So, 150 papers per day could have put $10/day in my pocket if everyone paid. Unfortunately the people who don't pay are the ones most likely to call in and get the delivery guy in trouble, so you almost can't stop delivery and have to eat the costs of those papers until you finally get the offender to pay up.

It was awful. Awful.

I did it, would not do it again.

I had to wait for the truck with the main part, and then mix all the inserts. If the truck was late you were waiting there like a moron.

The complaints part was true for me as well.

Also, seven days a week ... rain or shine. I dont think I ever cleared that much a month, except for Xmas time.

It paid for my college though, got out debt free.

If you're looking for some easyish extra cash check out ACD. My wife did it for a while. It's essentially overflow donation style call center work. She got to set her own hours, work from home, and the pay wasn't terrible. You get paid per minute on the phone, busy days paid as much as $20 an hour. Slow days could pay nothing, but you just mess around on the internet till a call comes in at that point.

Delivery to homes or stores? Are you responsible for collections or not? My mom did paper delivery for a while when I was growing up. It was hard on brakes in the car from the stopping all the time for the next delivery and piled the miles on the car (rural delivery route) but I guess she made OK money from it since she continued for a few years.

my mom decided that it would be fun to deliver the local weekly free paper to every house on the other side of town when i was a kid... it sucked- especially in the dead of winter when it was -20 and snowing.. i don't know how much money mom made at it, but she got to sit in the warm car and the 14 year old version of me got to walk down the street throwing them by the front doors.. and i never got paid a dime for it.. wouldn't have been horrible with a cannon to launch them or if we had the ethics of the people that do it now- they don't even slow down below about 15mph and only sometimes get my paper to land somewhere in my driveway..

I'm fairly certain that there is no muffler requirement for newspaper delivery vehicles, so you can save a few bucks on that.

All of this.

Plus the fact that the newspaper industry is dying/dead. Fewer people get papers delivered. I don't anymore and did for years. So you'd have to drive further between houses with subscriptions.

PubBurgers wrote: If you're looking for some easyish extra cash check out ACD. My wife did it for a while. It's essentially overflow donation style call center work. She got to set her own hours, work from home, and the pay wasn't terrible. You get paid per minute on the phone, busy days paid as much as $20 an hour. Slow days could pay nothing, but you just mess around on the internet till a call comes in at that point.

This sounds interesting, where can we find some more info? Also, what does ACD stand for?

Well... sortof. When I was just out of high school I worked directly for the newspaper driving delivery vans that dropped off the bundles for the carriers as well as all of the retail, vending and even a pile of RR tubes. By the time I left I had logged 470k miles in a van, in the dark, in remote NEPA thru rain, sleet, snow and deer season. I never made more than $9 an hour. (1987 money)

It was a berkeleying horrible job filled with shiny happy person personalities and not enough money to cover a decent girlfriend nevermind drinks or a college education.

OTOH, It's too bad NASA or BMW won't let me race a Chevy 3500 van with studded snow tires. I could be champ'een with my eyes closed.

I did it . . . in the 60s. No, I didn't make much but it was much better than nothing. Going to college at the time. I made all customers use a box unless they had a physical disability and everyone had to pay monthly. Many didn't like it at first but got used to it. I used an MGB and left the top down unless it was raining. I could roll the papers with one hand and stuff the boxes in 2nd. gear (no synchro on 1st on a 65).

Important note: most insurance policies won't cover you while you're doing this job (ditto pizza delivery). It's considered commercial use and anything that happens while on your route can be denied leaving you SOL.

In reply to BoostedBrandon:

Here's the link to the one she worked for:

http://www.acddirect.com/becomeanagent.cfm

It says you need call center experience but she didn't have any and was hired no problem.

I had a route as a youngster. Trying to get people to pay me started my long road to misanthropy.

My best friend's mom did this while we were in high school. She made enough to support 4 kids. I subbed for her a few times. The easy route was up the interstate filling paper boxes at gas stations and hotel lobbies. I enjoyed it as a teenager, a e36m3y Chevette, the radio, a couple of Colorado style cigarettes, and peace and quite at 5 am on the road.

ACD = Automatic Call Distribution. Think call center. If you're working from your house, it's decentralized.

I have nothing else to add other than that I go for a run at around 0515 in the morning and have nearly gotten run over numerous times by the twat who delivers papers in my neighborhood. She always drives the wrong way down my one-way street.