Postal service promises fewer delays

SANDUSKY — To stamp out problems that popped up this time a year ago, the United States Postal Service upgraded many aspects of its operations so mail gets delivered nearly as fast as Santa drops off gifts on Christmas Eve. Millions of Americans, including those across Ohio, experienced issues in getting their letters, packages and more on time during the 2020 holiday season. For example, many people received their Christmas gifts days — and, sometimes, even weeks — after Christmas Day. Why, though? Factors brought on by COVID-19 — record-level volumes, supply chain issues, capacity challenges with transporting massive amounts of mail, staffing shortages and the virus' overall uncertainty, among other issues — caused these delays. But the postal service spent all of 2021 troubleshooting these matters, preparing all levels of workers and enhancing processes nationwide to make 2021 a smoother operation for all involved especially — mail recipients. It's still possible delays could happen, officials said, but they shouldn't reach anywhere near last year's levels. The Sandusky Register reached out to Naddia Dhalai, a northern Ohio-based spokeswoman for the region's post office, who provided some context, background and assurances on this year's delivery protocols. Q: Regarding mail delivery, what has changed this holiday season as compared to last year's? A: This year, the postal service began planning for the holiday season in February, earlier than any other year. Our entire team, 644,000 strong, is focused on delivering for our nation. We've accelerated key processing, logistics and delivery investments to support higher volumes of delivery demands during the holidays and to ensure cards, letters and packages arrive on time. Our proactive measures not only correspond to challenges faced last year, but also align to our Delivering for America plan which includes $40 billion of planned investment over 10 years. Our organization is executing strategies to pull together people, facilities, technology, equipment and transportation into a well-integrated and streamlined mail and package network. With these investments and preparations, several outlined below, the postal service is well-positioned to ensure holiday cards and gifts arrive on time. Note: Local post office workers encourage people to leave their lights on where mailboxes are located and shovel off any snow to prevent carriers from tripping, slipping and/or hurting themselves. Q: What are those investments? A: Some key numbers at a glance: • 40,000 seasonal workers are being hired with the help of over 800 hiring events. Peak season employees began work earlier than last year, allowing for more time, training and experience on the job prior to volume increases. • 33,000 noncareer employees have been or will be converted to career status by peak season. This will improve retention and will allow us to continue to onboard new employees for a long-term career with the postal service. • 112 new, state-of-the-art package sorting machines are expected to be deployed across the nation. These machines, which add to the postal service's approximately 500 existing package sorting machines, can process thousands of packages an hour and are up to 12 times faster than manual sorting. • 50-plus additional package systems capable of sorting large packages were expected to be deployed prior to December. About 4.5 million additional packages can be sorted each day using this new equipment. • 100-plus processing, logistics and delivery annexes have been leased in locations where our operations require additional space during peak season. This includes 40-plus multiyear annexes in locations across the nation where we are experiencing year-round space constraints due to parcel growth. This adds an additional 11.5-plus million square feet to our footprint. • Nearly 3,300 trailers have been leased just for peak season. • Diversifying volume traveling across the air network, among additional air carriers; increasing air capacity by 12% as compared to last peak season; leveraging more reliable surface transportation providers. • The surface transfer center network has been expanded by 1.6 million square feet and over 300 dock doors to, among other things, improve cycle times, increase long-haul transportation utilization and mitigate driver shortage issues. Q: What recommendations would you give to people about mailing items to ensure they get delivered and arrive on time for Christmas before Dec. 25? A: Our advice to consumers this holiday remains the same as always: Plan ahead and mail early, particularly when shipping long distances. The busiest time of the year begins two weeks before Christmas. It's expected that customer traffic at all post office locations will steadily increase beginning this week. The week of Dec. 13-18 is anticipated to be the busiest mailing, shipping and delivery week. The postal service recommends the following mailing and shipping deadlines (Mail these items before or on these days to ensure they arrive at a given destination before Christmas): • Dec. 15: USPS retail ground service. • Dec. 17: First-class mail service, including greeting cards. • Dec. 17: First-class packages, up to 15.99 ounces. • Dec. 18: Priority mail service. • Dec. 23: Priority mail express (next-day) service. The postal service predicts that nearly 2.3 billion pieces of first-class mail, including greeting cards and packages, will be processed and delivered the week of Dec. 13.