PS Form 1838-C, the Carrier’s Count of Mail Letter Carrier Routes Worksheet, is the daily worksheet you complete during your route’s mail count and inspection period. To fill out PS Form 1838-C correctly, record your mail volumes on lines 1 through 13, log your office activities on lines 21 through 23, and enter your clock rings in hundredths of an hour while keeping hand-recorded time entries in regular minutes. You complete the form every day of count week except the day your route is inspected, when management takes over the counting.1National Association of Letter Carriers. Handbook M-39 Management of Delivery Services – Section 221.131
Who Fills It Out and When
Whoever delivers the route that day fills out the form. That means the regular carrier on normal days, and any replacement carrier on days the regular is off. The one exception is inspection day. On that day a manager counts your mail and records the volumes on the form, though you still make your own clock rings.1National Association of Letter Carriers. Handbook M-39 Management of Delivery Services – Section 221.131
Start each day’s form by filling in your name, route number, and the date at the top. Then count your mail before you begin casing.
Mail Volume: Lines 1 Through 13
Lines 1 through 13 capture piece counts by mail category. Accuracy matters because these figures drive the standard office time calculation and later transfer to PS Form 1838, the summary form used in route evaluation.2National Association of Letter Carriers. Handbook M-39 Management of Delivery Services – Section 222.212 Undercount your mail and the calculated standard time comes in low, making your route look faster than it really is.
- Line 1: letter-size mail, including ordinary letters, cards, and circulars.
- Line 2: mail of all other sizes, meaning flats, catalogs, large envelopes, and similar oversized pieces.
- Line 3: accountable and signature mail, covering registered, certified, COD, customs, Priority Mail Express, and postage-due items. Include any carrier markups in this count.
- Lines 5 through 13: additional categories including parcels over two pounds, sequenced mail taken out as second or third bundles, total deliverable pieces, carrier markups for forwarding or return, periodical markups, change-of-address orders, and insured receipts turned in.
Office Time: Lines 21 Through 23
Lines 21 through 23 record how you spend office time beyond casing and pulling down. You do not need line entries for casing, pulling down, marking up mail, processing changes of address, or personal time — those are already captured through your clock rings and volume counts.
Line 21 is for recurring duties. These are activities you perform every day, such as obtaining and setting up your mobile delivery device, attending safety and service talks, retrieving small parcels and rolls, and discussing daily expectations with your supervisor. For each entry, record the beginning time, ending time, duration, and a brief description. Each Line 21 entry must be verified and initialed by a manager to confirm it qualifies as a recurring office work activity.3National Association of Letter Carriers. Handbook M-39 Management of Delivery Services – Section 221.214
Line 22 is for non-recurring duties. These are activities that do not happen every day, like a conversation with the route examiner or responding to a fire drill. Use the same format: start time, end time, duration, and a short explanation.
Line 23 is for count time. This is time you spend counting the mail and completing Form 1838-C itself, or verifying management’s count on inspection day.
Record each activity as it happens rather than trying to reconstruct the day later. Anything you fail to record vanishes from the evaluation, and your route can end up looking like it needs less work than it does.
Hundredths of an Hour Versus Minutes
This is where most first-time count-week errors happen. Clock rings on Form 1838-C use a 24-hour format but record time in hundredths of an hour, not minutes. So 7:30 AM is 7.50 on the form. Clocking in at 8:15 AM is 8.25. Returning at 4:40 PM is 16.67.
The conversion is not intuitive minute by minute. One minute is .02, two minutes is .03, and the pattern is uneven throughout. USPS Notice 30 has the full conversion table, and it is worth keeping a copy at your case during count week. Some common conversions:
- 5 minutes: .08
- 10 minutes: .17
- 15 minutes: .25
- 20 minutes: .33
- 30 minutes: .50
- 45 minutes: .75
Now the part that trips people up. Clock rings — begin tour, leave for street, return from street, end tour — use hundredths of an hour. But hand-recorded time entries on lines 21, 22, and 23 are entered in regular minutes. The same 7:30 shows up as 7.50 on a clock ring but 7:30 in a Line 21 activity. Mixing the two formats is one of the most common errors on the form.
What Standard Casing Rates Mean for Your Counts
The office time standard uses a casing rate of 18 letters per minute and 8 flats per minute, plus 70 pieces per minute for pulling down. Those rates are applied to whatever volumes you record on lines 1 through 13. If your letter count on Line 1 is short by a hundred pieces, the standard drops by more than five minutes on paper even though you handled the mail. Count carefully, and count everything.
Inspection Day: What Changes
On the day your route is inspected, management fills in the volume lines and office time recordings on Form 1838-C. You continue to make your own clock ring entries for beginning, leaving, returning, and ending times.1National Association of Letter Carriers. Handbook M-39 Management of Delivery Services – Section 221.131
You have the right to verify management’s count. If a number looks wrong, ask to check it before you leave for the street. Once the form leaves your hands and moves into the evaluation, those figures are much harder to challenge.
If the route examiner finds any of your recorded time entries unrealistic — either inflated or deflated — the examiner should discuss those specific entries with you and note any adjustments and reasons on Form 1840-A.4National Association of Letter Carriers. Handbook M-39 Management of Delivery Services – Section 234.221 That conversation is allowed. Discussion of the overall route evaluation is not, and remains off-limits on inspection day.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Sloppy handwriting distorts route evaluation quietly. If a data-entry clerk misreads a 7 as a 1, the number in your file is wrong and you will not know until the adjustment lands. Write clearly and put each figure in the correct box.
Unrecorded time is lost time. Every minute of office work needs to appear somewhere — clock rings, Line 21, Line 22, or Line 23. If you spent fifteen minutes on a non-recurring task and did not log it, the evaluation treats that time as if it never happened.
Do not change your routine because it is count week. Work at your normal pace, take your normal comfort stops, and follow your normal sequence. The purpose of the count is to measure the route the way you actually run it.
Finally, do not confuse the two time formats. Clock rings in hundredths. Line entries in minutes. Keep a conversion table nearby and check yourself before you sign off on the day.