Maintenance allowance rate deemed low

Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of high gasoline prices will stay Rick Vickrey from his appointed rounds, delivering mail in Minco.

"I absolutely love what I do, taking care of my people," said Vickrey, a rural mail carrier whose route includes the town about 150 miles southwest of Tulsa.

Vickrey has no complaints about his job, but he says it would be nice if he could keep up with the cost of fuel.

The U.S. Postal Service reimburses its rural carriers for their vehicle fuel and maintenance costs.

Vickrey, who has been a rural mail carrier for 25 years, drives a 1997 Chevy Lumina to deliver mail on his 100-mile route of 365 mail boxes, mostly on gravel roads.

That means Vickrey needs to change the tires every three or four months, he said.

The Lumina needs an oil change about every month, and Vickrey must also replace its brakes often.

"You've got to have a dependable vehicle, so you've got to perform maintenance on them," Vickrey said.

The current equipment maintenance allowance is 48 cents a mile, but that might change this month.

Vickrey said the last rate change was in December, and it was a decrease, from 51-1/2 cents to 48 cents.

AAA-Oklahoma estimates put the average cost of gasoline in Oklahoma for December at $2.14 a gallon. The current cost is estimated at $3.07 a gallon.

Gill Sreaves, the Oklahoma state steward for the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association, said he hears about the equipment maintenance allowance from a lot of rural carriers.

"Some of them say they can't even run their route on what they get," Sreaves said. "Some of the carriers on the longer mileage routes, they'll spend $50 a day."

The association's officers and Postal Service executives will meet Wednesday to discuss the rural letter carrier contract, including the maintenance allowance, he said.

Oklahoma has about 2,400 rural mail carriers, and about 62 percent of them supply their own vehicles, he said.

Juanita McMurrian, a rural mail carrier out of Bixby, drives the usual white mail vehicle, a rarity among rural carriers.

Sreaves said most cities supply those vehicles, known as "long-life vehicles," for carriers whose routes are less than 30 miles. McMurrian, however, owns hers.

McMurrian, who drives a 70-mile daily route with 500 mail boxes, bought the long-life vehicle about six years ago for $7,000 from a mail carrier who was retiring, she said.

McMurrian doesn't know the vehicle's gasoline mileage -- the fuel gauge broke long ago, she said -- but she noted that she spends about $25 a day to fill its tank.

She gets about $34 per day through the equipment maintenance allowance.

That covers her fuel costs but not other expenses, such as paying for a tow truck if McMurrian gets stuck because of ice or mud, she said.

The Postal Service pays for the upkeep of the vehicles used by city carriers.

Bixby Postmaster Gary Harris said carriers hadn't spoken to him much about gasoline prices or the equipment maintenance allowance.

Carriers' pay is based on the number of mail boxes on a route, he said.

That means McMurrian's pay scale is different from the one for city carriers, he said.

Several postmasters in rural areas around Tulsa declined to comment about how gasoline prices affect mail carriers.

McMurrian said she was looking toward the end of June, when the Postal Service will review the equipment maintenance allowance.

"Right now, while all this high-priced gas is going on, they haven't increased it," she said. "We're still at the same we had in December. It kind of hits our pocketbook harder."

Vickrey said he would like to see an increase in the equipment maintenance allowance, but that it's not a make-or-break issue for him.

"That's not why I do this job," he said. "It's your people -- they have a trust in you. You're the mailman."

Jaclyn Cosgrove 581-8300
jaclyn.cosgrove@tulsaworld.com