USPS emphasizes role in delivering packages, pushes ahead with sorting center

Oct 1, 2022

Publishers will find their ability to drop mail at local post offices curtailed. Instead, they will be required to bring their mail to a new Sorting and Distribution Center in Athens, Georgia.

Newspapers in the northern regions of Georgia will lead the nation in October as part of a dubious parade toward the U.S. Postal Service’s next initiative to improve efficiency.

Publishers will find their ability to drop mail at local post offices curtailed. Instead, they will be required to bring their mail to a new Sorting and Distribution Center in Athens, Georgia.

The new S&DCs will be rolled out experimentally in more than a dozen other cities across America in 2023 if the Athens experiment is a success from the viewpoint of USPS management.

The new concept is part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Delivering for America plan, which hopes to gain billions from greater efficiency and higher postage rates in the coming decade.

S&DCs will require all carriers from targeted post offices within their region to travel to a central facility to case and prepare the mail for their routes each day. USPS has not yet announced what it will do with unused space at the consolidated post offices, where carriers previously worked in the back to case their mail for the day’s routes.

The S&DCs have been in the design phases at USPS since early this year.

Notice to publishers of the change occurred a little more than 30 days before they were required to change their drop locations.

Mailers might also be affected by a new Critical Entry Time that will change from 11 a.m. to 8 a.m. in processing plants across the country if USPS proceeds with its current plan.

The Postal Regulatory Commission is reviewing the entry time change, but USPS is not required to heed the Commission’s advice at the conclusion of the review. The National Newspaper Association is a party to the Commission’s review.

“We are watching all of these changes very carefully,“ NNA Chair Brett Wesner, president of Wesner Publications, Cordell, Oklahoma, said. “We got USPS to agree to increase access times and slots for the mail–processing facilities, but it is not yet clear whether newspapers will receive fair treatment as USPS continues its push to emphasize its role in delivering packages.”