Last post for jim after over a million miles

HE HAS driven over one million, one hundred and fifty thousand miles to bring the post to Tuam, but now Jim Flanagan has done his last run — just before his 80th birthday.
Jim was one of the few remaining mail van contractors with An Post, collecting the post from rural sub-post offices in the hinterland.
As he handed in his final bags of mail to Jimmy O’Dea, Manager of An Post Mail Centre on Galway Road, Jim said it was a nostalgic moment. He has countless memories of changes seen and people met during his 33 years collecting the post.
“While I have been collecting the mail from the sub post offices since 1981, this service has been in operation since the Great Famine year of 1846. Then the mail was taken to and from the sub-post office in Dunmore by a horse-drawn vehicle,” says Jim, who has lived in Tuam for most of his life but is a native of Gurteen, Dunmore.

Read the full feature in this week's edition.