Montour student Christopher Gregory, 17, delivers Gazette 2.0 to his Robinson Township neighborhood residents. His younger brother Nathan Gregory will take over the family tradition when he graduates this coming school year—TRADITION—
Christopher Gregory, 17, is one of a kind.
By Elizabeth Perry The Montour senior has been delivering newspapers door to door since he was 14. He is Gazette 2.0’s only home delivery paper boy. This unique job was a tradition passed on through his Robinson neighborhood.
“My one neighbor did it for a couple years and she graduated and gave it to me,” Christopher said. At the time, this was the best job Christopher could get, as he was too young to get work release paperwork from the school and his parents weren’t keen on driving him back and forth to work.
Christopher is carrying on a tradition started by his father, Dennis, who used to deliver the paper when it was the Suburban Gazette.
“Me and my brother had a route in high school,” Dennis said.
Christopher delivers papers to 26 of his neighbors. He fronts the money for the papers himself and either walks or drives around the neighborhood dropping off the news to each of his customers. When his customers rack up around $5 in debt, Chris collects the money from his neighbors. Most of them provide a tip, and that’s what makes the venture financially worthwhile.
“At first I did it for the money,” Chris said.
Now he has two other jobs in addition to the paper route – he works at Chipotle and does landscaping, too. He also started a high school bass fishing team with a friend of his from Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts Magnet School, so he’s extremely busy.
Mostly, he keeps up his deliveries because he likes keeping up with his neighbors. He chats with most of his customers, but there’s one older couple, in particular, he considers friends. They always end up talking for about 15 minutes, about “family, work, little bit of everything.”
Chris said Christmas is a particularly nice time of year, and his customers tend to be very generous.
This is Chris’ last year delivering papers. When he graduates, he plans to attend college in either criminology or business management. He would like to be a police officer, or follow in his dad’s footsteps by going into banking. Chris plans to pass the route onto his younger brother, Nathan Gregory.
“I’ve done his paper route before, when he couldn’t do it, so I would be interested,” Nathan said.
Nathan said the customers are nice and he’d be happy to keep the route in the family.
Editor’s note: If you have an interest in setting up a route to deliver newspapers in your own neighborhood, give Gazette 2.0 a call at (412) 652-5875.