By By Brent Davis / circulation director
March 17, 2002
Over the past few months I have received feedback from our subscribers and carriers about my little column here. (In all honesty, I have only received two calls from subscribers … one from my mother wanting to know when I was going to call her, and one from our editor, Buddy Bynum, warning me about the trouble I could get into for impersonating a journalist.)
However, I have received a lot of feedback from our carriers and several carriers have asked me to do a column about how they "make their profit," so to speak.
Our carriers do not receive a "paycheck" from The Meridian Star. The carriers are independently contracted businessmen (and women) who buy the newspapers at a wholesale rate and then deliver them to you, the subscriber, at a retail rate. This system is not unique to The Meridian Star. In fact, the wholesale/retail system is used by almost every newspaper in the country.
The carrier's income is derived from the profit they make when they receive their payment from you, the subscriber.
In fact, our carriers receive a "statement" from The Meridian Star which by contract they are required to pay, even if they haven't received a payment from all the subscribers on their routes. These statements our carriers receive can be as high as many thousands of dollars, so you can see why it is important to our carriers to keep up on the subscriber collections.
Now I have a unique system for paying my household bills. I draw a big circle on the floor and then I throw all my bills up into the air. The bills that land outside the circle are placed in a drawer to be paid month after next. The bills that land inside the circle are placed in a drawer to be paid next month. The bills that stay floating up in the air get paid immediately. (Just joking, MasterCard.)
Whatever system you use around your house to pay your bills please keep your hard-working carrier in mind. They don't make any money until you mail in your payment. We appreciate our subscribers. Thanks for being one.