Post office expects holiday mail to go smoothly

  • Friday, November 16, 2001 9:00pm
  • Business

The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — Despite the anthrax scares and resulting backups in mail delivery in some areas, the U.S. Postal Service has recommended the same holiday mailing deadlines as in previous years, and predicts that delivery will go smoothly.

But Public Citizen, the consumer watchdog group founded by Ralph Nader, is skeptical. Having studied the options for irradiating the mail, the group said such plans, if implemented before Christmas, could cause long delays.

"The logistical challenges are so substantial," said Peter Lurie, deputy director of Public Citizen’s health research group. "There are enormous numbers of unanswered questions with regard to this."

The Postal Service concedes that public reaction to the anthrax outbreak also is a large and mostly unknown factor.

"That’s one of the big questions," Postal Service spokesman Mark Saunders said. "With this anthrax issue, what does it mean to us? We’re in the process of trying to determine that right now."

The Postal Service’s mail volume has fallen since the terrorist attacks, dropping 6.6 percent in September and even more in October, compared with September and October 2000. If the decline continues into the holidays, it may buck a trend of small yearly increases in holiday mail. Last year, the Postal Service delivered 3.9 billion cards and letters from Thanksgiving to Christmas, 2.5 percent more than the year before.

The sagging economy may be an even larger factor than anthrax in holiday mail, affecting mailing volume and the number of temporary workers that mailing services hire.

"When people are concerned about their jobs, they tend to be less generous in their spending," said Robert McLean, executive director of the Mailers Council, a coalition of corporations and nonprofit organizations that account for more than 70 percent of the Postal Service’s mail volume. "That affects everything, whether it’s gifts given in person or through the mail."

On the other hand, some mailing industry leaders are expecting more people not to fly home for the holidays and instead mail gifts to their loved ones.

Either way, the Postal Service says it’s ready.

On any given day, the Postal Service has 210,000 vehicles at its disposal, Saunders said. It contracts with as many as 7,000 trucking companies, which supply thousands of additional trucks, he said. Last year, the agency contracted with 100 extra air cargo carriers two weeks before Christmas.

In past years, the Postal Service has added 20,000 to 40,000 holiday temporary workers. It says it has not decided how many it will hire this year. It depends on how much the volume of mail is affected by the anthrax issue.

The post office is getting some extra help this holiday season from Federal Express. As part of an alliance that took effect in August, FedEx is flying up to 3.5 million pounds of Postal Service Express and Priority Mail shipments each day. In return, FedEx has been allowed to put self-service drop boxes in every post office.

FedEx said it is not hiring any extra holiday help this year. Last year it hired about 6,000 temporary workers. The company said it expects to handle more than 6 million packages — about the same amount as last year — on its most hectic day.

If holiday packages pour in, the company can call upon its large percentage of part-time workers to put in more hours, spokesman Ed Coleman said.

United Parcel Service expects to handle 1 million fewer packages on its busiest day this year, compared with its peak day last year. But the 18 million packages the company expects to deliver on Dec. 18 would still be a 38 percent increase over the average daily volume of almost 13 million packages, spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said.

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