The courier has been with Swiss Post for 28 years. Until recently, it delivered letters and parcels using the so-called network delivery service. Every day she had heavy packages in the vehicle, an average of five shipments over 20 kilograms. Pet food, cat litter, but also brake discs or furniture were often among them.
“When the recipients were at home, they helped me carry them. Otherwise I had to pull the shipment up the stairs with a sack truck,” she says. Today she works as a full-time works council member in the group and takes care of the working conditions. She doesn’t want her name in the newspaper.
Once she had overlooked a step when delivering a table. “It hit me badly, then I had a few bruises,” says the delivery lady. The physical and mental stress caused by the heavy shipments in the delivery service is great. “My body is my capital. If I injure myself while towing or my back breaks, I start to ponder whether this is still the right job,” says the delivery lady.
The heavy towing has become an issue for the parcel carriers at the latest during the time of the corona pandemic. The sharp increase in online trade brought completely different goods to the front door – heavy and bulky goods. According to the Bundesverband Paket und Expresslogistik (BIEK), the average weight of the shipments is around five kilograms.
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“Parcels that weigh more than 20 kilograms are the exception at less than five percent,” says the BIEK. But with a total of around 3.5 billion parcels sent last year, that would still be 175 million parcels. The association represents the interests of the companies DPD, Hermes, GLS, UPS and GO.
Federal Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil now wants to reduce the weight limit in the Postal Act from 31.5 kilograms to 20 kilograms in the future. That’s what he told the trade union newspaper “Bewegen”. Should such a limit come, then online retailers would have to pack less content in their packages. Heavier shipments are then to be delivered using what is known as two-man handling. The minister wants to use the planned amendment to the law for this purpose. The Ver.di trade union is just as committed to this step as the DPVKOM trade union. It is difficult to say at the moment whether this will ultimately make shipping more expensive. Many online retailers do not charge customers for shipping costs and add this money to their retail prices.
Health insurance companies are also picking up on the topic again and again. The Hesse accident insurance fund, for example, recommends that from the age of 45 women should not “frequently lift or carry” more than 10 kg and men no more than 25 kg.
Concrete stands, iron garden furniture, cement
The picture is similar in the postbuses. A colleague of the delivery lady tells of concrete stands for parasols, garden furniture made of iron and building materials such as cement or plaster, which he had to deliver regularly. “Anyone who has a lot of apartment buildings on their tour is heavily burdened with such programs. For me it was up to ten packages a day,” says the deliverer. You can hardly tackle an 80-inch television on your own, but that also happens regularly as a program. The employee has recently been a full-time member of the works council for the postal group.
“The post office should take care of the problem. These heavy shipments should be driven out and handed in by two deliverers,” says the employee. And he accuses his bosses of not taking care of local issues. “I find it embarrassing when a post executive comes in and puts on a post jacket and then claims he knows what it’s like at the grassroots level,” he says.
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Deutsche Post itself is pushing for uniform rules. “We think a legal limit on the maximum permissible package weight is conceivable if this limit then applies uniformly and is also used and controlled by competitors,” says a spokesman for the Bonn-based company. This is particularly true given that some competitors are currently advertising a maximum unit weight of 68 kilograms.
“So before you introduce a new 20-kilogram limit, you should first ensure that at least the 31.5-kilogram limit is observed,” says the spokesman. According to Deutsche Post DHL, the proportion of shipments over 20 kilograms is almost two percent. Last year, Swiss Post delivered around 1.7 billion parcels.
In fact, the parcel services UPS and TNT also accept shipments of up to 68 kilograms. However, these are usually deliveries to business addresses. There, on the other hand, the delivery by truck at ramps is hardly comparable to the work of the postman and not as stressful as it can be the case with private addresses on the upper floor of a house.
Heavy shipments have to be lifted several times
The deliverers even have to lift the heavy shipments several times. When sorting in the mail center in the morning, they themselves get the parcels for their tours out of a large trolley, load them onto a smaller trolley, and then load them into their vehicles. On site, they deliver the parcel to the recipient. If the customer is not at home, they still have to hand the box over to a post office so that the addressee can pick up the shipment there in the following days.
The sticker “Caution, heavy package” is on some shipments. But the weight number, the specific information in kilograms, is missing. But that is exactly what the employees want so that they can adjust to the weight. Some of them would like to find out this number themselves. However, there are hardly any sorting bases with scales for the parcels, “for cost reasons”, as a delivery lady reports. A labeling obligation for heavy parcels is also one of the requirements of the new postal law.
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The initiative has met with rejection from some industry representatives. “We are critical of Federal Labor Minister Hubertus Heil’s plans to set weight limits for parcels as part of the current amendment to the Postal Act,” says Marten Bosselmann, Chairman of BIEK. He warns against diluting the Postal Act in its core as a competition law with non-specialist aspects. He doesn’t think a lower weight limit is necessary, be it through the Postal Act or labor law.
Trade union wants licensing in parcel delivery
The unions see things differently. “We are demanding a lower upper limit for the weight of parcels within the framework of the postal law,” says Christina Dahlhaus, chairwoman of the DPVKOM trade union. However, this limit must apply to all parcel services, including Deutsche Post’s competitors. This in turn requires licensing in parcel delivery, just as there is already in letter delivery.
“Only in this way can the delivery services be obliged to comply with a maximum weight or to have two men deliver heavy packages,” says Dahlhaus. After all, the heavy packages are partly responsible for the high number of sick days at Swiss Post. The average sick leave is a good ten percent.
Deutsche Post is the clear market leader for parcels to private households. Competitor Hermes is the next largest parcel service in this delivery business. “Shipments over 20 kilograms make up less than two percent of our shipment portfolio,” says Hermes. The company welcomes “fundamentally practical suggestions for making work easier” for delivery employees. The company does not become more specific on the subject. Hermes currently limits parcel shipments to 31.5 kilograms.
But the problem will grow in importance. In the future, almost all postmen will also deliver packages. The pure postman becomes the exception. As early as 2025, the postal group wants to have implemented up to 90 percent of this combined delivery nationwide in all areas that are suitable for it. Parcel shipments will then be part of everyday life for the majority of the approximately 100,000 employees at Swiss Post in the delivery service – and with them the heavy boxes.
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