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?
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…