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Is this only local to me, or is it nationwide?

For a while, I've been able to drop off FedEx shipments at ANY Dollar General store around here...and the DG people have a FedEx "app" built into their DG scanner that tells the driver (Ground or Express) that there are packages to be picked up.

I'm 25 minutes from Walmart/Kroger (basically: an hour r/t), but (as of a couple of years ago) there is ONE store that is only one mile from blokeplace...you guessed it: DG

Those two old King tubas (discussed in the repair forum: sold) will leave from that DG store, this week...and (of course!) I will pack them based on planning for them to fall ten feet or more from conveyor belts.

I sorta like my location:
> 15 miles (23 minutes @ speed limits) from the nearest freeway exit (which defines it as inconvenient for large-city criminals to prey on me)
> 1 mile from a FedEx drop-off place
> 7 miles (10 minutes - speed limit = 55 mph) from two different post offices
> 5 miles (7 minutes - with an 11:30 A.M. pick-up) from a bolted-to-the-ground post-office-owned mailbox (in which I can securely leave sold mouthpiece shipments)

Now...If I could ONLY convince the USPS to put one of those bolted-to-the-ground mailboxes out in front of DG...

more: An old abandoned gas station restaurant (close to DG) is slowly being rehabbed by it's owner (as he gets money to continue on), and the plan is for it to be an individually-owned barbecue/hamburger joint.

even more: There are two places (only ten miles away) that sell NO-alcohol gasoline - for my mowers/chainsaws/weed-eaters/etc., BUT I have to drive EIGHT miles (two directions) to get car gasoline (but even an "empty" tank car can usually make it eight miles, so...)

Of those, that which I covet most is the no-alcohol gas.

But the gas station BBQ is right up there!!

DG has added something like 1,000 stores over the past year, and plans to open another 1,000 as well. I think they have over 17,000 locations now, and heard that something like 75% of the US population lives within 5 miles of a DG.

Largely because it is the cheapest place to buy groceries. But I guess FedEx is a nice bonus, too. :)

(I drop at the local hardware store, which is as much "general store" as it is hardware... Minus the groceries, though)

bort2.0 wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 8:48 am
(I drop at the local hardware store, which is as much "general store" as it is hardware... Minus the groceries, though)

The one I go to in DE also has an FFL for G&A.

Forbidden in MD. (At least in my county)

You guys actually shop at DG? omg…

That place is a haven for crime and drug sales, they get held up or burglarized regularly, and they are ABSOLUTELY FILTHY inside.

Most all franchise stores (dollar stores - to big box - to upscale) in $h!tty areas are $h!tty, because the customers and the employees in $h!tty areas have a tendency to be (well...) $h!tty. I moved fifty minutes (no: not TO “exclusive”, as there is a low income subdivision which begins only 2000 feet from the corner of my property, but...) AWAY from $h!tty, our Dollar General stores are not $h!tty at all, and are spotless.
I wouldn’t even stop my car at a snooty-poot store/eating establishment - in the county just west of my county - for fear of being shot.
DG saves me from those (still: inside THIS county) hour’s-drive round trip trips to big box stores when all I need are eggs, sausage, cat food, and low-carb pork rind snacks...and - well - when a customer runs over one of my ($1) solar edge-of-bloke’s-road indicators.
...oh yeah: and when I desire three-minute-roundtrip FedEx shipping drop-offs.

Oh yeah, New DG at the beach are fine.

We don't have them where I live. Rent too high.

bloke wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:16 am Most all franchise stores (dollar stores - to big box - to upscale) in $h!tty areas are $h!tty, because the customers and the employees in $h!tty areas have a tendency to be (well...) $h!tty. I moved fifty minutes (no: not TO “exclusive”, as there is a low income subdivision which begins only 2000 feet from the corner of my property, but...) AWAY from $h!tty, our Dollar General stores are not $h!tty at all, and are spotless.
I wouldn’t even stop my car at a snooty-poot store/eating establishment - in the county just west of my county - for fear of being shot.
DG saves me from those (still: inside THIS county) hour’s-drive round trip trips to big box stores when all I need are eggs, sausage, cat food, and low-carb pork rind snacks...and - well - when a customer runs over one of my ($1) solar edge-of-bloke’s-road indicators.
...oh yeah: and when I desire three-minute-roundtrip FedEx shipping drop-offs.

Say whatever you will, DG is crap. I'm sorry that it is your local go-to for *anything* at all, ever. They are right down there with Payday Loan paces as an indicator of certain decline in a given area.

the elephant wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 1:33 pm
Say whatever you will, DG is crap. I'm sorry that it is your local go-to for *anything* at all, ever. They are right down there with Payday Loan paces as an indicator of certain decline in a given area.

Ah, Family Dollar must be more your speed then. You know, just like when all the swells would to go to JC Penny when the rest of the slobs had to go to Sears back in the day!!

Your pair of posts display precisely what you've accused mine of displaying:
"I must now defend my statements at all costs...I'm completely right; you're completely wrong; all 17,000 DG stores are just like the fifteen around my home (even though the people who work at and patronize them are vastly different), and my opinions are more informed - based on my world travels, oh yeah, and DG's eggs, sausage, pork rinds, cat food, $1 solar lights, and FedEx shipping drop-off service are not organic, etc..."

...and it's commendable that you didn't hijack my thread about "dropping off FedEx shipments at Dollar General"

JUST kidding.

I am saying that all "dollar stores" are harbingers of economic decline. They usually crop up in patches, like mushrooms. Then the payday loan places arrive. Then the property values plummet while the property taxes rise. Look it up. Dollar stores pretty much suck, and they sell garbage. ALL of them, as a species, are bad news.

Do they sell cold beer there??

Like the WAWA/Sheetz do in VA??

Asking for a friend.

Here's the crime rate (a decade or so) seven miles north at the county seat.
I looked at a crime map for the entire county, found that the county seat's crime is the highest in the county, and took that one...
Most of the others are 0's, 1's, and single digits...even more boring that these:



OK...I WILL ADMIT TO SOMETHING:

I nursed PRECISELY the same anti-dollar-store biases as you - (yep: based on my experiences)...but it just hasn't happened here...
There are too many people carrying sidearms (who are really good shots, and not hesitant to pull them out, when the time is right), too many cops right around all the dollar stores, and (with this PARTICULAR dollar store - which DID concern me, when it was being built...YES: for the VERY SAME REASONS they concern you...)

There just is no viable escape route:



Further, all the cops (AND deputies AND state troopers) around here are SO bored, that - if a report of an armed robbery ACTUALLY came over their radios, they would ALL stop what they're doing, ALL go "YEEEEEE-HAAAAAWWW" and hightail it (like: 95 mph) towards the criminal's escape route.

A guy from Memphis tried to rob a gas station up in Oakland (see map) a couple of years ago. He caught some gunfire from the Oakland cops (who got there before he could even get to his car), he (shot by the cops) made it to his car, drove back towards Memphis, crashed (bleeding) and spent a long time in the publicly-owned hospital before going to jail. Unlike "too many daily ones to list" (45 - 55 minutes to the west) something like that (just like back in the 1960's - when I was a little kid) would be BIG NEWS around here. EVERYONE would know about it, and EVERYONE would know the names of the cashiers and the criminals.

To the contrary, I would argue that "people's majority voting patterns" are "harbingers of crime".
A few years after it became apparent to me that (based on VOTING patterns...not the types of stores) I had better "get out while I still can", I GOT OUT.
...and (no thanks to my knowledge...it was just stupid luck OTHER THAN realizing that I MUST get out) I timed it perfectly - selling JUST BEFORE the real estate "bubble" burst, and buying out here JUST AFTER the burst.

There have always been "dollar stores". When I was a little kid, they were called "five and dime" (T, G, & Y - at that time - was a formidable national chain of them). There have NOT - though - always been "routine daily, murders, shootings, assaults, and robberies". That stuff really did not BEGIN to become routine (at least, not in this part of the country) until the 1990's...and it has snowballed (absolutely: top-down orchestrated...both by our elected officials: who benefit from orchestrating chaos, and by the Cosa Nostra: which now subcontracts all of it's retail drug trade to local gangs, and subsequently launders it through "legitimate" corporations...and no: It's not gangsters who rob dollar stores; it is the CUSTOMERS of the gangs who rob dollar stores).

bloke wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:16 am when a customer runs over one of my ($1) solar edge-of-bloke’s-road indicators.

Damn customers!

Apparently, a 10-feet-wide paved road is too narrow a space in which to steer a 6-feet-wide car.
' funny how the UPS/FedEx guys seem to be able to negotiate it...

York-aholic wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 3:37 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:16 am when a customer runs over one of my ($1) solar edge-of-bloke’s-road indicators.

Damn customers!

bloke wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 3:54 pm Apparently, a 10-feet-wide paved road is too narrow a space in which to steer a 6-feet-wide car.
' funny how the UPS/FedEx guys seem to be able to negotiate it...

York-aholic wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 3:37 pm

bloke wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 11:16 am when a customer runs over one of my ($1) solar edge-of-bloke’s-road indicators.

Damn customers!

FedEx and UPS drivers can do it, since a couple of complaints from a home/business owner to the main office might result in a dramatic loss of income.

Now everyone who has ever visited Blokeplace is thinking "Is that me he is talking about?" or "So that's what that little bump I felt was."

And everyone who will ever visit Blokeplace in the near future will be aiming for them.

York-aholic wrote: ↑Mon Jun 14, 2021 4:55 pm
And everyone who will ever visit Blokeplace in the near future will be aiming for them.

That’s exactly how I took it, a challenge!!

Not to worry; we have a few spares, and the dollar store has the regular ones for $1, and they have the organic ones for $2...as the long as I watch my back.

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