Business

The Work We Do: Rusty Kransky, mail carrier

Hi, my name is Rusty Kransky and I am a mail carrier in Greenport.

I started in September 2003, so I just celebrated my 14th year.

There are five routes in Greenport. There are two routes where we actually walk with a cart. It’s a lot of walking. The route is 12 miles a day. Up and down streets. Up and down steps, porches.

I usually get to work at 8 o’clock. What you may not know is before we open [the clerks] actually sort all our mail for us.

I actually only have a quarter of the mail with me [at a time.] So I get it all ready, I put it together and somebody takes the rest of the mail out in a truck and drops it off at locations all along the route. So when I run out of mail, there’s more waiting for me.

Rusty Kransky. (Credit: Nicole Smith)

I have a lot of great people on my route who are very, very nice to me. In the summer on hot days they’ll bring me out cold bottles of water. In the winter they will bring me hot coffee, or tea. Sometimes they say come on in and sit in front of the wood stove. It’s wonderful in the middle of a snow storm. On nice days like this people will see me out and about and they’ll say, “Wow, I really would love to have your job.” But, of course, they don’t realize it’s not a seasonal job. We’re also out there in the winter, in the snow and rain and ice.

It’s a wonderful service that you can actually go online and order things and all of a sudden this package shows up and it’s brought right to your door. You don’t have to go to the mall or go shopping. People that have difficulty getting out can go online and have everything brought to them. Of course, their mail comes right to their house. I think also it helps sometimes people who are elderly, people who are housebound, to see a familiar friendly face day in and day out. Someone they can depend on, someone who will help them, or at very least, someone to talk to.

‘The Work We Do’ is a Suffolk Times multimedia project profiling workers on the North Fork. This weekly feature is made possible by Peconic Landing. See more photos on Instagram @thesuffolktimes.