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Mostly Cloudy The changing face of the post office
Text alerts, letter carrier tracking and more bring parcel delivery into the 21st century
Package delivery has been a growing business for the post office over the past few years, but never have deliveries started as early as this year, said Elizabeth Kelly, postmaster of the Malverne post office and a 28-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service.
“I was surprised at how early it started,” said Kelly. “We normally get busy from Thanksgiving to Christmas, but this year we’ve been busy since the beginning of November.” By the time the Christmas shopping season is in full swing, Kelly said, the Malverne facility will deliver an average of 1,000 packages a day.
A couple of miles up Hempstead Avenue, Pamela Baker, postmaster of the West Hempstead post office, offered similar sentiments. “We’re delivering parcels seven days a week now,” Baker said, adding that the postal service’s national contract with Amazon for same-day service has increased its package deliveries exponentially. On Sunday, Nov. 22, alone, the West Hempstead facility delivered more than 350 packages for the online retailer, a number she expects will only increase. The post office will continue Sunday delivery through Dec. 26. Malverne will begin the service this Sunday.
The upswing in parcel delivery is just one of the ways in which post offices are evolving to meet ever-growing demand, especially during the holiday shopping rush. With more people paying their bills online and fewer people mailing holiday cards, the U.S. Postal Service is generating more of its revenue through package delivery.
And systems have been put in place to keep those deliveries, and the postal workers who handle them, safe and on schedule. “We have tools where I can look at and see where my carriers are throughout the day,” Baker explained. “If I see a truck that’s sitting, I’m going to go out there and see if everything is OK.”
Among the tools she uses is Google Satellite, which tracks carriers through scanners they carry, largely for safety. Baker recalled one instance in which a letter carrier passed out while on his route, and Nassau police were notified, but she wasn’t. The carrier was taken to a hospital, but his truck was left unattended. “Something like that is very scary, and no one was notified that there was a carrier out there,” she recounted, adding that she found out what had happened only after the carrier arrived at the hospital.
Another byproduct of increasing package delivery is virtually instantaneous email and/or text alert service to package recipients. “We’re providing customers real-time notices as to when packages are delivered to their house, and they can sign up for that online,” said Kelly. It has been a service postal customers have been requesting, she said.
“We’re realizing the package business is where our revenue is going to come from,” Kelly added. “Everyone is paying their bills online now, so we kind of lost revenue on all that first class mail.”
As well, many fewer holiday cards are being mailed these days, which has led Kelly to conclude that many younger residents, who exchange e-cards, have never seen the inside of a post office.
Despite the dip in letter delivery and the focus on technology to facilitate package delivery, some aspects of postal operations carry on as always. Half of Malverne’s 10 letter carriers have been delivering mail on their current routes for more than 25 years. “Walter [O’Malley] has been here for over 30 years; he delivers by the church,” Kelly said. “Janet [Guido] has been on the job for over 25 years ... I think at the time we were all hired, people considered it a career, but I don’t think many newcomers will stay in the post office for 30 years anymore.”
In West Hempstead, which has double the staff of Malverne’s 25 workers, and 23 mail routes compared with Malverne’s 10, Baker said that her primary responsibilities remain the same: “To make sure my employees work in a safe environment,” she said, “and that the mail is delivered to every house every day, and no mail is brought back unless there is a hold.”
All post offices nationwide are feeding into nostalgia this Christmas season with two stamps featuring beloved Christmas cartoons: “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The Charlie Brown stamp celebrates the 50th anniversary of the television special, as did the Rudolph stamp, which made its debut last year.
