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What’s Your Job – Delivering Phone Books
Back when I was homeschooling the kids, one of many part time jobs I had was delivering phone books and flyers to doorknobs. These jobs are paid by the piece and since I am a fitness walker, I made pretty good money.
Delivering phone books was very official. This was for Qwest annual phone books. You are not really interviewed for the job. You meet with someone who explains what you are going to do and if you agree, you’re hired. You are hired as an independent contractor which means you are responsible for your own taxes and you get to work the hours you want and as many or little hours you want. About the only requirements were that you were 18 or older and had a licensed and insured car.
Before beginning work, you had to attend an orientation. Here they described what you would do, how you got paid and they talked about ethical issues like not throwing your books into a dumpster. They do spot checks and had discovered the latter in the previous year. We were also told that we could not leave phone books anywhere near the mail box, we had to bring it to the front porch.
The first day of work, I showed up to have my station wagon filled it up with phone books, plastic bags to put them in and flyers that told about how to recycle your old phone book which had to be inserted into each plastic bag. I got to choose my route. The route sheet had the house numbers on it and how many books you need to get to supply all the houses. You picked up the plastic bags and flyers here.
Next you drive to some semi trucks where the books were. After picking up your books, you were on your way. I had my Thomas Guide (detailed city map) and was on my way to a small city outside Portland. I was advised to pick a city neighborhood because it was a lot faster than driving up and down country roads. This was good advice.
These were the full sized phone books, big suckers. I would stand at the back of my car with the hatch open and stuff the books and flyers into the bags. I figured I could carry about 10 books at a time. So I would park my car and hit about a 4 block radius with books, then move my car. I got so I could fling the books to the porch from about half way up the sidewalk which saved me time. Back and forth I went for around 300 books per day. It was tiring, but I made around $20/hour and lost about 5 pounds. And I felt great!
The following year I tried the same with flyers delivered to doorknobs. Not nearly as official as the phone book delivery, I received a copy of a page out of Thomas Guide with a line around a designated neighborhood. No house numbers, just streets. This job was harder because I had to actually to go up to each door. Lots of steps to climb. These old arthritic knees didn’t like this as well. I don’t think I could do this full time, but it was fun while it lasted. If you’re interested, check your local job boards at the first of the year, this is when the phone books are usually delivered.
What’s your job?
January 9th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Wow, this sounds almost like what I did back during my early college days. The first time I started delivering phone books, I was given a route in a neighborhood that was filled with steep hills. Since we had to walk and deliver the books to the doorsteps of each and every house, I was to the point of exhaustion when I finished. But it paid off when I saw how big my paycheck was for the job. Apparently I had gotten one of the “bigger” routes.
The next route was much easier. I was actually given an assisted living residence where all the tenants lived in one big building. So we simply just loaded a bunch of the books onto shopping carts they had there and went no more than a few feet to each door delivering them.
This is definitely a good way to make some extra income, and at the same time get a good workout.
January 10th, 2009 at 5:54 am
I had apartments buildings that were supposed to pay big. But you had to climb an awful lot of stairs to get the books to the doorsteps. Killed my knees.
January 10th, 2009 at 6:18 am
Oh yeah, I saw those too and was glad I didn’t get those. I got really lucky with this particular route because it was all indoors, and there was an elevator to go to each floor. Otherwise my knees would be killing me as well.
June 29th, 2009 at 8:27 pm
I’m a stay-at-home mom looking to make some extra cash. I saw an ad for delivering the phone book in the Sunday paper and think I might give it a go. Thanks for this information!