By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
APRIL 9, 2024 | Postal customers all around Atlanta and in other parts of the country are finding that the old, reliable post office isn’t what it used to be.
Mail is being delayed. Businesses are failing to get checks mailed by their customers, who often become past due. And passports are being delayed. Postal customers across the nation are feeling it, and normal postal services are in a mess.
It all started in the Atlanta area on February 24, when the post office opened its Palmetto “Regional Processing and Distribution Center,” one of 60 such centers from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year plan for improving mail service. From the start, at one of its first new centers in Richmond, Va., mail service has been seriously impacted. One of the most serious log-jams is at the Palmetto center, south of Atlanta.
Mail from downtown Atlanta, the Metro Center in Duluth, Macon and Augusta started going to Palmetto on February 24. The huge Duluth North Metro office on Boggs Road was opened on February 27, 2012, but no longer serves the area. The Post Office gives no reason for closing the Boggs Road operation, except to consolidate it with others in Palmetto.
This is what you may now encounter at a post office.
And the delays began.
GwinnettForum has several mail items lost in the process. As an example, one letter, mailed on March 1 and postmarked from Peachtree Corners, arrived on April 5 in Norcross. Additionally, GwinnettForum has several other letters that people have said were mailed since February 2 which haven’t arrived yet.
Other businesses report these serious delays.
Members of Congress early on reported problems with DeJoy’s new mail distribution system. That includes U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff and Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia.
As one guy told WSB-TV’s Tyisha Fernandes: “(Trucks are) supposed to stay there (at the Palmetto center) for 30 minutes and be gone (but) are staying there for four hours. So when they get there, that pretty much ends their route.” Another guy said that there are 200 dock doors at Palmetto “to get trucks in and out quickly, but it’s still not enough….Every day the dock doors are full and you still can’t get trucks in and out.”
Another postal employee said of the operation: “There’s too much coming in. There’s too much automation. There’s no room to store the mail.” Another reported that “supervisors were having to step in, and that was slowing operations.”
Meanwhile, the Postal Service on March 11 launched an audit of the Palmetto center. But it will not be released until August 2024. You wonder if some of the mail that is delayed will still be undelivered by then.
One postal manager told NBC News: “It’s just a dumpster fire right now. If you’re in a business, you’re going to be discouraged from using the mail because you want your stuff to actually get there.” That person also called the Palmetto center “a complete house on fire.” On-time delivery went from 60-70 percent to roughly 20 percent.
The head of the Post Office, DeJoy, is a GOP donor who has been in his position since a Republican-controlled Board of Governors installed him in 2020. He might be in trouble. In March, President Biden appointed U.S. Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh to fill one of the postal Board of Governors seats. If confirmed by the Senate, that would make six Democrats on the nine-person board. It makes you wonder why that board has not acted sooner on replacing DeJoy.
The old excuse once was “the check’s in the mail.” That may still be an excuse used by many. Only now, if it’s in Palmetto, who can tell when it’ll eventually arrive, if ever?
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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