![]() and be back by 2 p.m.Īnd occasionally, she won’t make it back at all. The 60-year-old makes her appointed rounds in something like eight hours on a good day. Unnamed dirt roads known only to locals spider off into countless rutted two-tracks and slink out of sight toward a forgotten homestead, a pumpjack, a livestock water tank. Morris hits stops like Muddy Gap, Split Rock and Ice Slough, all little more than forlorn mailbox clusters gravitated near a geographic oddity in the otherwise endless miles of featureless landscape along Highway 287. Crossroads too tiny to even be called hamlets like Lamont, which Google Maps calls a “a very small populated place.” Morris’ beat includes mere placenames that appear on map software only when zoomed in to the max. Her stops are roadside ranch drops where solidly built steel boxes are built to withstand thermonuclear war or the unrelenting Wyoming wind, whichever is worse at the time. Morris runs mail between Rawlins, where she is now based, and Lander every day but Sunday. Tebra Morris' daily mail route takes her 300 miles across some of the most remote parts of Wyoming. I've been doing this 11 years and I’ve never had a winter like that.” In the month of February, I was able to complete my route - Rawlins to Lander and back - only 12 times. I ran nine days on closed roads with permission. “I spent seven nights total stuck overnight in Lander. “If you think I-80 was bad, 287 North was closed more. “Quite a winter!” Morris said of covering her route this past winter. Her route is just shy of 300 miles, and she drives it six days a week, rain, shine or - more commonly in Wyoming winters - blizzard. Morris drives that far between mailboxes. The average rural route carrier in the United States covers 45 miles a day. ![]() Many use their own vehicles and are paid a flat rate determined by bid every year. They’re hired by the USPS as independent contractors to cover more remote areas out in the sticks. Then there are those like Morris, called rural route carriers. The typical mail carrier in the United States covers about 8-10 miles driving, half that if walking. Morris, a native of tiny Bairoil, Wyoming, runs one of the longest mail routes in the nation. Tebra Morris has a rural mail route that exceeds 300 miles every day, (Tebra Morris) ![]()
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