As the old U.S. Postal Service creed proclaims, “neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night” will stop mail carriers, who include Jim Ryan, from delivering parcels to their customers.
At the end of September, however, Ryan will stop delivering mail after 22 years and hand off his contracted mail route of more than 350 customers to another driver.
Ryan said he plans to move to Oil City where he will do part-time administrative work for family members who also have a mail route business.
Ryan, who is disabled and now works three days out of the week, said he currently has a mail route in the Custer City and Lewis Run communities.
In looking back, Ryan said he had his first taste of the business in the early 1990s when he was asked to help with a mail route after a route driver died unexpectedly. At the time, he was working at the Kwik Fill gas station in Bradford for Kenny Stillman.
“I stepped in the next day and helped Kenny with the deliveries,” Ryan recalled. He found that he enjoyed the work and a couple of years later in 1995 made a successful bid for the route.
Jim Ryan said he and his late wife, Jan, had five young children and worked as partners on the route so he could keep his manager’s job at Kwik Fill.
Ryan said mail from the Bradford area, at the time, was taken to Erie to be sorted and mailed out from that postal facility. Mail is now sent to Rochester, N.Y., instead of Erie, for sorting and delivery.
Ryan recalled delivering mail with his wife from Bradford to Erie in a large truck for several years. The couple also drove an express mail truck from Bradford to Buffalo, N.Y., for a period of time. He and his wife quickly found out the mail had to be delivered, no matter what the weather was like — or how they felt.
“This is the deal when the mail has to be delivered. If you’re sick, you have to go out sick if you’re not fortunate enough to have a substitute,” he remarked. “The mail goes, no matter what.”
He remembers terrible snowstorms that left blankets of snow or ice on the highway to Erie.
“Many a night we’d leave Bradford at 3:30 in the afternoon and instead of getting back by 7, we’d get back by 12” midnight, he added.
In 2001, Lee and Jody Zimmerman, Jan Ryan’s sister, started working with them and incorporated the business under the name, Ryzim Inc. Ryzim supplies it’s own vehicles and related amenities, such as insurance, for the company.
“Lee and I became 50/50 partners in the business,” Jim Ryan continued, noting his son, Edward, also has a route with the corporation. Edward Ryan will continue working with Lee Zimmerman after his father leaves the business.
Jim Ryan said for the time remaining, he will continue picking up mail in Bradford and dropping it off at the post office in Custer City before driving additional mail to Lewis Run for sorting and delivery to his rural route customers.
“I’ve made so many nice friends being up there in Lewis Run,” he shared. “They come out and talk … it’s just like you develop a personal relationship with these people. I’ve really enjoyed that and I’m definitely going to miss them.”
