With a heavy heart, we are announcing a complete end to home white glove delivery. We had high hopes for the program, however we have never been able to staff it. At the end of the day, we needed to decide what was more important, getting a paper out, or keeping the home delivery going. Our passion is the paper, and while we love the concept of “White glove delivery”, it’s not where our focus should be. Sadly that has been the main focus of two-thirds of our staff for far too long. We’re a growing paper, and the problem has become more and more pronounced.
The lack of drivers has led to two people delivering papers for over 1,000 readers. Those two people at one point were working about 32 hours per week (6-14 hours per day), just doing deliveries. This is on top of their other duties. Let’s face it, even passionate people can’t work more than 80 hours per week for long periods, and these guys did 100-hour+ weeks for six months. I personally log an average of 55 hours a week, just driving.
We are very proud of the White Glove delivery. While we’re open to starting something in the future, at this time, there are not enough drivers in the area with an interest in the position to make it worthwhile. Trying to keep it going has meant we have no ongoing ad sales, or billing, and not even enough time to do the proper maintenance on our equipment, which has had horrendous results.
What this will mean for readers is that papers will be delivered via US Postal Mail. We have worked out getting the papers out a little more quickly, and we’ll be adjusting our deadlines a bit to make things work, but frankly, this is the best option at this time. Our retail papers will be delivered by our salespeople. Likewise, deliveries to retirement homes will continue as they are.
There will be a price change for all postal customers. If you are located in Cascade County (for mail purposes) There was a postal surcharge added to your account, that surcharge will be eliminated, for persons outside of the county, your surcharge will be reduced. We’ll be reaching out to auto-pay customers who we need to adjust autopay.
Author: Andy Anderson
Andy is publisher of Foxys Publishing Co, as well as pressman, ad sales, distribution and sometime janitor. He occasionally makes a wild attempt at writing but quite often is seen running around our offices trying to "Get 39 million things done today..."
