The great mail slowdown of 2020 didn’t just imperil Election Day.
It’s threatening Christmas now, too.
“We’re slammed,” said one frustrated postal worker at the U.S. Postal Service’s processing center in Susquehanna Township. “There’s just no winning this year.”
The holiday season was always busy but the combination of a global pandemic, decades-long staffing shortages and policies handed down by the Trump administration in advance of the election contributed to mail delays this year not seen since the wildcat strikes of the 1970s.
Packages are piling up nationwide at facilities like the one on Crooked Hill Road as the service warns that many won’t be arriving by Christmas morning. This time, of course, the slowdown has little to do with the frontline workers sorting and delivering the mail.
“There’s only so much any one of us can do,” said a package handler who, like many local postal workers, fears reprisal for speaking out. “They knew Christmas was coming. They could’ve done something and they didn’t.”
The postal service put out a call for temporary workers in advance of the Nov. 3 election amid scrutiny over a slowdown in the delivery of mail-in ballots but it’s unclear how many were actually hired. Workers at Crooked Hill and elsewhere say whatever hiring was done wasn’t enough.
USPS spokesman Tad Kelley said he could not provide figures other than to say hiring decisions were made at the local level.
“Instead of just hiring seasonally, the Postal Service is focusing its resources on actively hiring year-round,” he said, in a written statement.
Earlier this year, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy handed down a series of decisions that slowed mail delivery, including the removal of five sorting machines from Crooked Hill, a liberal leave policy in response to the spread of coronavirus and a prohibition against extra delivery trips, the last of which was reversed following a series of lawsuits.
Workers say the scrutiny around the election resulted in prioritizing mail-in ballots over most other types of mail, including packages. But the impact of all of this rippled outward. Over the last month, the agency simply wasn’t prepared for the demand as more people bought their Christmas presents online.
The agency began raising alarms nearly a month ago, advising users to send packages early.
“We continue to flex our network including making sure the right equipment is available to sort, process and deliver a historic volume of mail and packages this holiday season,” Kristin Seaver, who oversees retail and delivery nationwide, said in a written statement.
No reliable public data exists on the current backlog but court filings show the agency approved more extra trips in the last week than in the lead up to the election. During the most recent 7-day period available, postal workers in the region that includes Pennsylvania made 1,413 extra delivery trips, versus 771 in the week leading up to Nov. 3.
ShipMatrix, a tech company that tracks retail deliveries, estimated that 6 million packages per day are being left in warehouses awaiting pickup. Another 2.5 million are picked up but not delivered on time.
It’s small businesses like Cupboard Maker Books in Enola and Keystone Candle in Swatara Township that face the consequences as packages that used to be delivered in two days now arrive in four or six or disappear completely.
“One person asked if they could get the order by Christmas and I had to say, ‘Sorry, that’s not going to happen’,” said Michelle Mioff-Haring, of Cupboard Maker Books. “Nobody can trust the mail.”
Of 60 books Mioff-Haring shipped at the end of November, five disappeared. By comparison, she said, several years ago when her business relied more heavily on online sales she averaged about one lost book per 1,000 she shipped.
When she does need to ship something, she said she specifically avoids the Crooked Hill processing center because the service desk is so short-staffed and the packages she ships there never seem to get checked into the tracking number system.
“Don’t get me wrong: the carriers are fantastic,” she said, “but the problem seems to be what’s going on at the hubs.”
And Mioff-Haring said she’s experienced similar problems with UPS. A recent order she placed that was shipped via UPS that would ordinarily take three or four days to arrive instead took 15.
Of course, the average customer may not realize the problem is with the delivery services and not retailers.
“Many of us are overwhelmed and stressed because we can’t make people happy,” said Kristen Cowles, of Keystone Candles. “We do what we can and, if we have to refund customers, that’s what we have to do.”
Cowles said her family’s candle-making business is feeling the strain on both ends. One of its most popular scents, pumpkin pecan waffle, was unavailable for months, first because the fragrance supplier didn’t have it in stock and then because its bulk orders were delayed.
“People were not understanding why we couldn’t get it to them,” she said. “We’re asking for patience from people — and we’ve seen very little of it.”
And it’s not just Christmas gifts that are showing up late.
John Rubisch, of Marysville, watched with increasing anxiety as his arthritis medication criss-crossed the country. It arrived at Crooked Hill on Nov. 30 only to be sent first to Charleston, W.V., then to Columbia, S.C., then Orlando, Fla. His medicine returned to Crooked Hill on Dec. 8 only to be erroneously sent to Mount Union in Huntingdon County. Finally, it arrived at his door in Perry County on Dec. 11.
For a couple painful days, he went with no medication. In the meantime, the drug supplier sent him an overnight shipment — which took two days — when it was unclear that the first would ever arrive.
“Now I have more pills than I know what to do with,” Rubisch, 68, said with a chuckle.
At one point, the USPS tracking data indicated the package either didn’t have a ZIP code or had an erroneous one. But the package Rubisch finally received had the correct ZIP code, although the name of the town was smudged.
Postal employees told PennLive that the delays in this specific case could’ve come from any number of sources along the way. Sometimes, the most efficient route for a package will make no sense geographically due to truck schedules. The more likely culprit, however, is a simple mistake, either by a human being or by the sorting machines that read ZIP codes.
The delays are so widespread, however, that focusing on a single package’s path through the system is like contemplating a single snowflake in the midst of a whiteout. And, of course, this is all happening against the backdrop of COVID-19. According to the workers, a number of their colleagues have fallen ill but putting a figure on that is difficult.
“I’ve stopped wondering when it’s going to get better,” one postal worker said. “It just keeps getting worse.”
Wallace McKelvey may be reached at wmckelvey@pennlive.com. Follow him on Twitter @wjmckelvey. Find PennLive on Facebook.
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