noise."Signal Boost: Delivery · 11:56pm Jan 1st, 2020
Today’s addition to my not-a-contest is by none other than ROBCakeran53!
He wrote Delivery, don’t you know.
Also My Little Dashie, but who’s ever heard of that?
Back when I was in high school--coincidentally, just a little north of the delivery area in the story (but you can bet I know all those towns) I noticed an older Chevy G-Van with an obvious lean to the left. The driver was a large man, so I assumed that was the cause of it (like, not ginormous; probably between 300-400 pounds), but after reading his story, I can’t help but wonder if newspapers were actually the cause of it. For anyone who doesn’t know, densely packed paper of any kind is heavy. It’s funny that I hadn’t thought about that van until I read Rob’s story.
As I mentioned above, I know all the towns mentioned that are in Jack’s delivery area, which brought back lots of happy memories of being old enough to drive the car by myself and chasing Tisby (Tuscola and Saginaw Bay, now Great Lakes Central) trains around.
I will also say by way of preempting one detail in his blog post (or perhaps goading him into including it), the G-van in the cover art is in far better condition than the one described in the story. This is a more representative image:
Source (YouTube)
(It’s kind of worth watching the video; the narrator’s enthusiastic about it, and there’s a street name bonus at the end.)
Amusingly, while they had several trimlines (Vandura, Beauville, etc.), the basic model was literally called “Chevy Van.” Also, while not particular germane to ROB’s story, I’ve got a 1980 Chevrolet P-30 step van, which my insurance agent couldn’t find on her listing--it’s a common model, but not for non-commercial use--so she just said it was a Beauville. Which it very much isn’t.
I’ve said before to write what you know, and this story is another fine example of that. Like in that one episode of Caught in Providence where Judge Caprio and the defendant talk about fruit wagons back in the old days, there’s an art to folding papers and putting in the Sunday supplements that every single newspaper delivery person would know, and which I’d wager none of us could duplicate.
It also marks the fifteenth story of 2019, ending the year on a good note . . . keep ‘em coming! The ride never ends (I hope) 
Excellent story. I could feel the water squishing up from the floorboards.
I used to drive a P30 and I loved that truck! We had a bench and storage cabinets built into it and it would run when nothing else would.
Rob's story was really great and told a story only someone that had been there could tell. Those are always good tales.
One of my customers is a crazy old newspaper delivery guy. He drives Fords though. Also, I'm pretty sure he evenly loads his vans. Though he uses post office crates to hold the newspapers, and almost got arrested for that once lol.
I would totally buy a "Chevy Van". There's just something wonderfully straightforward about that kind of naming.
Thanks Admiral. Ill hopefully have my blog post up tomorrow. I need to take a couple pictures that I forgot to do today.
Already found and favourited that one, but thanks. :)
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I had an old Chevy truck that was rotted out enough I’d get mud on my arm when I drove on dirt roads in the rain.
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They’re great trucks, although too big for general use. Simple design, and as I recall, once Chevy stopped making them, Utilimaster bought the entire assembly line and kept producing them under their brand name.
I agree--stories like that are the best. Just what I was hoping for in the contest, really.
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Econolines, presumably? Those are darn good vans. Had something like 85% of the full-size van market for a while, which is probably why Ford rarely even bothered advertising them. They generally handle abuse well--some of the ones we’ve got for CMH have around 300,000 of city mileage.
As I recall from the post office crate I might or might not have, they say in pretty big letters that using them for non-postal business is a federal crime.
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Yeah, and I’ve always admired them for it. Same as the Toyota Pickup. The name tells you what you’re getting.
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I woulda done the blog post sooner, but he posted the story just as I was starting a sixteen hour shift at work.
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Ah, hope the long shift went well!
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It did. I didn’t get enough sleep, ‘cause one of the guys decided to get up at 4am, but I got through it and then my next shift turned out to be pretty chill, at least.
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Good. :)