USPS Pilots?
 

How difficult is it to get a slot with the USPS and does anyone have an idea what their salaries average? I would imagine that it is a highly desirable slot since it is with the federal government.

As a letter carrier?

As a letter carrier? The USPS doesn't have any airplanes that I know of! I'm sure someone will jump in and correct me!

I think Ryan used to operate 727s for the USPS, now, to fly the mail, you have to fly for UPS, FedEx or any one of the passenger carriers that handles mail. They don't have their own dedicated airplanes anymore.

I assumed that they had a small fleet after I saw one of their jets at Newark once before.

The USPS never had their own aircraft. The 727s belonged to Emery, who contracted with Ryan to crew them. Before Emery, the contract was held by Evergreen.

Yeah, I worked at Evergreen when they had the USPS contract w/the 727..
The pay wasn't that uh, lucrative. But hey that was almost 20 years ago.
It was fun flying tho for a young guy.
EZ had a pax airplane under contract that was used for carrying the mail. WE had to have a Flight attendant in the back to act as a Cargo smoke Detector.
That was interesting. The engineer was responsible for the fly-away kit. We had to watch the loaders so they wouldn't remove it or any emergency equipment Things had a way of disappearing...
The mail would get strapped in the seats and stuffed in the overhead. One time I went back to watch and the loaders were removing a life raft to make more room for mail. I don't know where they were planning to put it. Maybe take it home for the kids?

Actually, Emery shared the contract with Express One (Longhorn callsign.) Emery/Ryan had the 727-100s and EO had the 727-200s. You haven't lived till you've done night hub-turns on a non-sched salary. Puts our contract into perspective.

You're right. I forgot about ExpressOne. I'm pretty sure Emery/Ryan also had some 200s though. I remember thinking when they got them how much fun it must be to fly a maxed out 200 with -7 engines. Possibly they didn't use them for the postal.

Yeah, Indy to LAX in a -7 200 was a real treat.