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What Newspapers Did You Deliver?

LBPete

LBPete

Rolling Along
Subscriber
Do kids still have paper routes? It was common back it the day but I haven’t seen kids delivering papers in years. Too bad. It was a great way to start. How many of you guys had paper routes?

I started around 1965 at the age of 12, delivering the New York World, Telegram and Sun. It later became the World, Journal, Tribune before it folded. I started with 35 or 40 papers and later took on a second route which roughly doubled the total deliveries. As I remember it, the weekly subscription was 65 cents. (If I remember correctly, the newspaper took about 50 cents out of that 65.) Most customers tipped a dime to make it 75 cents. A couple of high rollers would give me a whole dollar.

- Pete
 
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In my area, papers are delivered by adults in cars. I used to deliver the Pontiac Press in the Oakland County Michigan area. I started with 51 customers, drove it up to 83, by going door to door to non-subscribers and signing them up. It was fifty cents a week back then and I got six cents off each customer a week. Tips were slim weekly, but five dollars was what most tipped for Xmas. I got discouraged due to non-paying deadbeat and would leave "gifts" to those non-payers on their las delivery such as animal waste and occasionally road-kill in their door or paper box. My circulation dropped to about 35 customers and the paper fired me. Go figure!
 
We didn't have home paper delivery in my rural Texas area in the 60's. I do remember attempting to sell Gritt Newspapers to fellow students when I was in the 6th or 7th grade. If I recall my profit was just a few cents per paper sold. Didn't take long until I decided it wasn't worth the effort.
 
I started delivering papers with the local afternoon edition (Dallas Times Herald ... no longer with us) in the Summer of '61 (I can remember listening to Gary (U.S.) Bonds sing School Is Out on my little transistor radio that I carried with me on my route) ... I was 13 ... after that, I threw a morning route (up every morning at 3:30 AM) for a little over a year ... 200+ papers ... fortunately the drop was only 4 blocks from my house and the route included my house ... but delivering papers on a bicycle in the pouring rain wasn't much fun (my sainted mother used get up and help me on those days) ... it was good money for a 14 year old ... but the hours sucked ...
 
I started delivering a neighborhood paper in Chicago about 1968. As well as delivering I had to collect the money due for the paper once a month. The next year at the age of 13 I moved up to the Tribune and Sun-Times. I used to push around this huge cart with wagon wheels on it with about 100 papers in it. Did this for about a year and broke one screen door window in that time. Unfortunately it was my own house where it happened. My parents got a big kick out of that.
 
New London Day, Norwich Bulletin, Hartford Courant. I can remeber the Day was .42 cents on collection day(six days delivery) after school route. Morning route was Norwich Bulletin. Buddy did hartford Courant, I took over his route when his family moved. To the best of my memory.:D
 
I had an Oakland Tribune route for a couple years and subbed often for friends
including SF Chronicle, SF Examiner, and Alameda Times Star. I haven't seen an old school paperboy in many years.


Carl
 
I had a paper route when I was a kid. started @ 12 and had it for a few years. At one point I had 3 routes.

It was 50 cents a paper, so two bucks a month and I got to keep half :banana: Hey it funded my model rocket fantasy for a while.

It was called the "Suburban" by Community press.
 
Donkey! said:
Hey it funded my model rocket fantasy for a while.
Click to expand...
Mine too! It also funded a heathkit VTVM that I still have.

I am jealous of you guys that could throw papers. Mine was a very urban route with a good number of apartment buildings. I had to drop the papers at each apartment's door. Often people had very specific requests on where they wanted their paper put to keep it out of the weather or from being purloined. Being NYC, winter could be tough. When the weather was too bad to carry the heavy papers on my bike, I would use a little grocery cart and slog through the snow on foot. (Insert violins here).

- Pete
 
The Jacksonville (IL) Courier -- the evening paper, now consolidated with its morning competitor and known as the Journal-Courier -- in 1967 / 1968. $0.45 / week times about 110 papers. Whoo-ee! If I averaged my collections (hard to do) I made about $13.00 / week for about 16 hours' work (including collections).

After about 18 months I quit and used my accumulated savings to buy a Schwinn Varsity 10 speed...


-- Steve A.
 
Well, all the hard work in paper routing told me at a young age to become good at something most people weren't.

For me it was HAM and CB radio. Bet you guys can't get a cobra 29 to slam 52 watts PEP from a 2 watt dead key. :D

I made a hell of allot of money modifying radios for people. All sorts of them.

Export boards are a little easier, but I don't care what it is. you can give it hemorrhoids.
 
1964. A stones throw to the other side of the river in Queens. One of the dumbest papers to succeed as a daily - the provincial, imbecile, Long Island Star Journal.

Published during a Norman Rockwellesque time warp about a world that never existed, it pandered to a readership who couldn't tell the difference.

The Long Island City plant deforested the countryside from Monday to Saturday, but on Sunday let The Long Island Press in Jamaica do the hatchet work.

Carriers worked for themselves on commission through the manager of the district office. You made a penny markup on each daily paper and two or three cents for each Sunday. Managers were often chain-smoking, neurotic, shell-shocked individuals, who couldn't make up their minds on a career or if they preferred Stalin or the Fascists.

I delivered 90 - 100 ass wipes after school, and approx. 70 - 80 hot diaper loads on Sunday* (I refused to get up at six in the morning for this - especially after I learned that the Sunday edition came in to the station on Saturday night. So it was usually between 10pm and 2am when I made the rounds. Now the most important thing at the time for me was not personal security. The early 60's were still pretty innocent. It was knowing who was up late Saturday night getting pie-eyed, so I could ring his bell and get buzzed you into the apartment building without complaints.)

It was great fun hanging out / being out late. I'd love to do it again just for the hell of it. I would love to deliver 45 year old newspapers at two in the morning next Saturday, on my old route to my old customers - even though they're probably dead.
 
Fisherdude said:
Had a paper route in the Chicago suburbs around 1959-60, but for the life of me I can't remember which paper it was.
Click to expand...

The "Geez I'm getting old Gazette"?? ;)

I had a weekly for years, the local "Sun Newspapers", and also did thier routes that had no carriers, sometimes 7-10 routes with friends and Dad driving us around (he got reimbursed for it, but I think it was really for us kids).

I also filled in on the daily morning paper, the Plain Dealer, and swore I would never do it again.

Then of course my neighbor asked me fill in for him a couple years ago, and like a class a idiot I agreed.

They don't hire kids anymore, you have to be an adult. You drive to the local distribution point and fold/bag them there, then go to your route.

I never took myself as a morning person, and this experience proved me right beyond belief. I tip my paperman better now.

Pete
 
I had an evening paper route in a suburb of Cleveland in the '70s. The paper was the Cleveland Press that disappeared long ago. They were a Monday through Saturday paper!

The papers came bundled together with wire and dropped off by a large step van (not really but the only way I can describe it) around 3:00 pm. Any advertisements had to be collated prior to starting out. This could be quite an adventure since the bundles were delivered to a street corner (that wasn't that close to your house). Inserting these could be a real pain on a windy day (Yes, if your visual is of papers flying every where with a boy shedding tears, you got it right).

The papers were hauled around with a huge bag (made of cloth) filled with +30 papers, slung over your shoulder. You walked the route of course, but since I lived in a rural area, I rode my bicycle.

Money collection was done on Saturday; I don't recall the price of the paper - maybe $0.35? I had one of those metal coin holders/dispensers held on by a belt at one point (I thought I was cool when I first got it). You kept track of payment by these small tickets, representing each home address. You used a hand-held paper punch to update the ticket.

It was a great first job along with cutting grass in the neighborhood. It took about an hour to deliver all the papers. With Cleveland weather, it wasn't unusual for this to stretch to more than two hours in the winter.

One of my dad's favorite lines came from my route. Whenever I came home from school and the weather was bad (rain/snow), I would ask him if he would drive me, and his response was always the same: "Are you made of sugar boy?", and off I would go delivering the papers on my bike or two feet. On a few occasions, he would take me!

Seems this job disappeared long ago......
 
Local paper deliveries were always "adults in cars" where I am - waaaay to rural for a bicycle to run a full "route"!

When I hit 11, I started delivering GRIT, had to build my own customer base. Don't recall how many "subscribers" I ended up with, but after about a year the distance and the dogs on the route made mowing yards a lot easier and more profitable. :smoke:
 
I delivered the San Jose Mercury, which was the morning paper, and the evening paper was the San Jose News. On Sundays it was combined into the San Jose Mercury News.

I delivered it fro the 8th grade all the way through High School, until I started working full time the day following my graduation ceremony. 5 years plus!

The cost changed several times over those 5 years, and I averaged 50-75 bucks a month, depending on how many customers. At one point I had the most customers of any route in SJ, 130 daily? 150 on Sunday? I can’t remember exactly) and my manager told me he was going to split the rout and give the second route to someone else, I told him if he did that I’d quit, so don’t. And he didn’t

I got to be quite expert and rebuilding the rear wheel of my middle weigh bike, as it simply wasn’t up to the loads I was putting on it. I got used to the sound of spokes pinging when the snapped and at least twice I know I collapsed the wheel and had to go home, get my older bothers bike (He had another route).to finish. Restringing the rim got to be routine, and I had to replace the rim a couple of times and the whole wheel assembly at least once.

I miss those days sometimes, and really miss riding the bike, I can’t sit on a bike seat any more, it hurts like the bones are coming through my skin. I tried 5-6 different bike seats and never found one comfortable enough. Maybe a motorcycle seat would work…
 
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