Editor’s Note: Postal Woes

Complaints have been coming into our office about issues of the Peninsula Pulse arriving late in mailboxes, or not at all. This predates the holiday package crush, so we can’t blame that. 

We deliver the papers to the local post offices and they are responsible for delivering them to all mailboxes in Door County. If your paper doesn’t arrive, all we can do is direct you to local businesses and newstands where you can pick up a copy.

The majority of the complaints we receive come from Sturgeon Bay, but we’ve heard about mail jams across the peninsula, about postal worker shortages, about tidal waves of Amazon packages drowning regular mail delivery and postal carriers.

We’ve tried to connect with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to learn what’s going on, but we’ve been stonewalled. Our emails go unanswered and local employees won’t talk. We don’t blame them; the USPS doesn’t seem like the kind of employer that suffers dissent. Neither would local employees have the authority to speak on behalf of the USPS practices and priorities that may seem as mysterious to them as they do to customers.

It’s not all that helpful to plunge the plethora of USPS data that’s available online if no one is available to provide context. But it is interesting to note that USPS’s fiscal year 2023 ended Sept. 30 with a net total loss of $6.5 billion, compared to net income of $56 billion for the prior year. 

The net income last year – according to the USPS press release that reported the year-end results – was due primarily to the one-time, non-cash impact of the Postal Service Reform Act of April 2022. 

“Although we are just in the early stages of one of the nation’s largest organizational transformations – which is improving our processing, transportation, and delivery operations – we are already providing more consistent, reliable, and timely delivery to America’s businesses and residences,” said Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in the statement.

DeJoy was talking about the 10-year, USPS Delivering for America plan, with a two-year progress report on it released this year. It’s a big plan with a transformative reach, and “delivering more packages to more American households and businesses is the key to our future success,” according to the plan.

This would make Amazon, reportedly the USPS’s biggest customer, also key to that USPS plan for success. 

This brings up an interesting dilemma. It’s easy to slam the giant retailer, even as we order our cat food from them. In other words, if postal workers are overwhelmed delivering Amazon packages in rural places like ours, who’s to blame? Do we really have to purchase everything online, from occasional purchases to everyday items like bottled water and toilet paper? Do we really want our postal carriers to walk through rain, snow, sleet and hail to deliver – our groceries?

I’m not an Amazon fan or user, and only occasionally purchase online goods (usually at this time of year). If Amazon went out of business tomorrow, it would have zero impact on my life. I buy in person and local, or not at all – with very few exceptions. So it’s easy for me to make the following suggestion because it doesn’t cost me any personal hardship: maybe we order online less. We know what packages postal workers deliver to our residences and businesses; maybe we cut back on those things.This is only a suggestion, one that spreads the fault for this problem appropriately to both the suppliers and the demanders. One that causes us to question the true cost and consequences of wanting what we want when we want it.