I worked with Dave 1976-79. He was mostly the Letter Reg Section Officer, and I was a Letter Reg. I used to dictate 1200-1500 letters a week, the whole section doing over 2000 a week total. A dictation tape would have maybe 75 letters on it, and accompanying it would be a cardboard banana box (box originally used for bananas - perfect size for this job) full of the relevant CF folders in order. The typist would set up the tape in her own machine, open the first folder to get the full name and address, type the letter and envelope, put the carbon copy in the CF folder, then go onto the next one.
They were paid by the line. They rapidly learned that if they used extra wide margins they made more lines!
We used several outside typists as well as some in the office. They mostly lived in East Grinstead, some a bit further afield. So Dave would schlep the banana boxes full of CF folders out to them and back from them each day, usually on a day or two turnaround. He started off with a motor scooter but got a small car later for a short while, I seem to remember.
So, his complexities would have included taking all of that into account. It might seem simple to someone else to set everyone up with ample supplies in the first place and schedule pickups for the morning only, or something, but the typists had their own schedules - family, other jobs etc. - and weren't available 24/7. And "ample supplies" and "org staff" don't usually go well together. Fortunately HCO's Letters Out stat depended heavily on the Letter Reg Section, so letterhead was never a problem although good dictation equipment sometimes was.
Paul