Matt Vossen delivered his last newspaper on February 1. A Post-Dispatch carrier for 42 years, Vossen purchased his route in Clayton for $50,000 in 1983, back when carriers were independent contractors. He made it work—come rain, sleet, or hail, and without any sick days—until he turned 70 and realized he could retire.
But what to do with the route?
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Obviously, no one would pay $50,000 for it, much less the $165,000 his purchase price would be today, according to the federal government’s inflation calculator. But he knew that the newspaper’s owners, Iowa-based Lee Enterprises, have been steadily buying routes from its contractors and moving them in house, and Vossen assumed they might treat him the same way.
Instead, he received a curt notification that the company was no longer making such purchases. They seemed to assume that, knowing there was no other market for it, he’d just hand it over.
He resisted. “It just didn’t seem fair,” he says.
So Vossen appealed. The situation was still bothering him up until his last week as a carrier, and at that point, he went in to talk to his boss’ boss—and that man seemed to care. “He said, ‘I’m having a meeting with my boss tomorrow, and I’m not going to let up until they have a good reason not to give you money, because I believe that you should get it,’” Vossen says.
This Wednesday, 10 days after Matt Vossen gave up his route, he finally got the small check he’d been promised. (A spokesperson for the Post-Dispatch said the company had no comment.)
He asked that we not print the total, other than to say it was in the low four-figures and was based on how many houses were on his route that still got the Post-Dispatch. It’s not $50,000, not even close, but he feels satisfied by it. “That’s what other people got as well,” he says. “And I was happy to get what I did.”
Retirement has been more of an adjustment. Vossen still finds himself fretting over his customers and remembering notes he should have given to his replacement. He also still hears from his former customers.
“If he would have just let me ride with them, he wouldn’t have all the headaches,” he says of Lee and his replacement. “He probably is still wondering, you know, where this address is, or he just throws a paper somewhere nearby. I got a call from somebody yesterday who just left me a voicemail saying, ‘Oh, man, I did get my paper. You just threw them all next door!’” He shrugs off the idea that he spoiled his customers. “It’s all about, ‘Can you read an address?’
He had a retirement party last week at C.J. Muggs. Family members came, friends, some customers. That, at least, induced no mixed feelings. Says Vossen, “It couldn’t have been more perfect.”
