Here's why the Postal Service wanted to remove hundreds of mail sorting machines

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

This week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy pulled back on a host of cost-saving measures at the U.S. Postal Service after a public outcry over delivery delays and the potential to upset mail-in voting come November. Of particular concern was the removal of hundreds of mail sorting machines.

According to a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union and obtained by The Washington Post, the USPS was poised to decommission 671 of the massive machines, roughly 10 percent of its inventory, and capable of sorting 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour. The Postal Service, by comparison, processes as much as 500 million items each day.

But USPS officials and industry insiders say the removals were part of a long-range plan, one that reflects Americans’ diminishing use for letters and growing reliance on package delivery.

The 671 machines slated for removal were scattered across 49 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. At the state level, the removals correlated closely with population: states with more people, and hence a larger USPS footprint, had more machines taken out. California had the greatest number, 76, followed by Florida (59), Texas (58) New York (52) and Ohio (34). Alaska is the only state with machines on the list.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/heres-why-the-postal-service-wanted-to-remove-hundreds-of-mail-sorting-machines/ar-BB18bNzo?li=BBnb7Kz

Uh huh

[OAITW r.2.0]

1. Timing is everything.

We know what the end game was here. Suppress the vote for Donald Trump.

[LisaL]

2. Yea, and right before the election during which a lot of people want to vote by mail, nobody

figured out that "diminishing use of letters" is temporary and during the election use of letters will drastically go up? Makes total sense. Not.

[TheBlackAdder]

3. Not buying it. They really just wanted to kill thousands of baby 🐥.

[DenverJared]

4. Doesn't pass the stink test

and ..

even if true, it gave Trump a black eye. (which is the good news)

[dmr]

5. So, then, why were so many machines destroyed?

If you're just moving them around, you don't destroy them -- and at record speed!

Even if some were legimately removed, why destroy them? (At record speed).

I'm unconvinced with their reasoning.

[onetexan]

20. Bingo! Timing is clear here what this criminal is doing.These machines cost millions.

If they're not needed at one place removing them to a storage place would make more sense, not destroying them. There's no question this is clear sabotage and Dejail needs to be arrested and RICO charges need to be pressed.

[spanone]

6. BS

[UpInArms]

7. Am calling bullshit

On all of it.

[JHB]

8. Bull. There are procedures for disposing of federally-owned equipment that were not followed

This was not decommissioning and removal, this was "get rid of them -- quickly!"

[crickets]

18. The destruction was to make sure they could never be used again.

There would be no reason to discuss 'putting them back.'

[unblock]

9. That's not how you mothball equipment.

You move it to storage in case you need it later, or you sell it, or you break it down for parts.

You don't destroy it and throw it in the garbage.

[napi21]

10. That doesn't make sense. If those sorters weren't needed, I would think they weren't being used.

If that's the case, there wouldn't be any slow down in the mail. The only thing I've heard that could cause the mail to sbe slower is the elimination of overtime. If that's so much OT? THERE'S where this DT Superstar should be investigating!

I shouldn't be even thinking about FIXING anything. I'm thinking there isn't really any serious problems with the PO. DT just wants to make mail in impossible & all this publicity about the PO is a way they think they can hide behind.

[Hoyt]

11. Article seems to say removal was justified since letter processing has declined

significantly. I’m sure some will argue the science/data.

If the union is correct, it sounds like USPS could get buy with less than 35% of the sorters (10% can handle roughly 160 million pieces of small mail an 8 hour day). And, even after those 671 are removed, we still have 6000 in operation.

And one would expect the most unused capacity — hence idle machines — in high population areas.

[LisaL]

12. Why is the mail slow and why is USPS sending letter to states claiming they can't handle the

election volume?

[Hoyt]

22. Because everyone has jumped on this train that is undermining the vote.

I believe we need to stop trying to undermine peoples' confidence in voting, just like this Democrat:

“The office has been flooded with calls for the past few days,” said Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state of Arizona and a Democrat. “The concern I have is that, like any campaign of misinformation, it attempts to undermine voters’ confidence in our process.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/17/us/politics/postal-service-voting.html


"I served as a regulator of the Postal Service for nearly 18 years under three presidents and I urge everyone to be calm. Don’t fall prey to the alarmists on both sides of this debate. The Postal Service is not incapacitated. It is still fully capable of delivering the mail. The focus of our collective concerns should be on how the Postal Service can improve the speed of delivery for election mail."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/18/opinion/usps-vote-by-mail.html?

Oh, the letter to the states simply says don’t wait to send out ballots. Some states had planned to do it a week or so before November. Sounds like a good warning, rather than some attempt to keep us from voting.

[crickets]

21. If the removals were justified, the systemic changes would have gone virtually unnoticed.

There's always going to be a time when machinery or mailboxes wear out and need replacing, there are shifting needs over time as mail use changes, with volume of some types of mail decreasing as others might increase. It's true that sorting equipment and delivery methods change with the times.

Still, if the removals were justified, mail delivery reliability would not have changed, certainly not to this degree.

Heart patients and others around the country wouldn't be scrambling to get medicines locally because the mailed prescriptions they have been able to depend on for years have not arrived. The VA would not have had to find other means to send prescription medications to veterans nationwide now that the Postal Service has broken down and cannot be depended on to deliver on time. Prescription delivery, including for the VA, was fine for decades up until the last weeks and months as the machines were taken out and employee hours were decreased.

Chronic late delivery of prescriptions nationwide, rotting food parcels, dead plants and animals -- this is not normal. This is not the level of service our USPS has provided for us year in and year out over the decades. These are not the results we expect or the results we see when the systems the USPS employees depend on are available and working properly. USPS employees are speaking out who agree and who are angry and disturbed about what is happening.

Our US Postal Service has been deliberately sabotaged.

[Hoyt]

23. Mail delivery hasn't changed that much. Remember, we are in a pandemic.

The USPS is hit harder than other Federal agencies. Private contractors have sick people too. Amazon backed up some too. Supply lines are backed up, so things are sent to post office as quickly as before.

Expecting one or two day delivery for $0.55 is expecting too much.

[crickets]

26. I have seen no reports that the USPS has a problem with excessive employee absenteeism

due to COVID, certainly this is not an argument being used to explain the current situation. Perhaps I missed these reports. Could you kindly link to sources?

The USPS is hit harder than other Federal agencies.

Which ones? In what way?

Amazon backed up some too.

Other than in how they are affected by USPS 'last mile' deliveries, Amazon seems to have adjusted and recovered.

Expecting one or two day delivery for $0.55 is expecting too much.

No one said anything about expecting one or two day deliveries for $0.55.

[Hoyt]

27. My guess is you didn't look.

https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2020/05/these-federal-agencies-have-seen-most-covid-19-deaths/165578/

Amazon stopped guaranteeing one day delivery early on. Now We get stuff in two to three days.

One or two day delivery is what people got used to with PO. Mine is arriving pretty much on time.

[Hoyt]

24. Prescriptions aren't going through the sorters removed. Hopefully,

the letter sorters will get replaced by package sorters.

[crickets]

28. You know, never mind.

edit: I am just going to quietly let this conversation go.

[uponit7771]

29. Looks like the changes were illegal cause they didn't go through regulator commission for postal ...

... services.

The sorting machines might have been planned for decommission but its the timing and the mail here in KCMO has been severely disrupted metro wide.

[Takket]

13. you don't save money and increase efficiency by destroying equipment you already own

any business person with even a passing familiarity with asset management knows that. the only reason to remove the machines is to sabotage the system. that's it.

[Elwood P Dowd]

14. Anybody here smell something?

[mercuryblues]

15. what a load of dead chicks & rotted food

It is taking weeks to get packages

This is nothing but more fucking lies.

[Hoyt]

25. Good reason to replace letter sorters with package sorters. Packages are increasing,

letters are way down.

[ecstatic]

16. Bullshit. Explain the delays, some of which I've personally experienced

with first class mail.

[Elwood P Dowd]

19. So have I.

One of my doctors always mails me a card reminding me of the next appointment. Mails it about two weeks before the appointment. Then sends me a text message the day before. The card for late July arrived AFTER the appointment. My sister orders lots of stuff from Amazon. Even her Trump loving ass is complaining about multiple delays - sometimes several days late.

[eppur_se_muova]

17. LYING WITH STATISTICS!! 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per HOUR ... 500 million items each DAY

If these machines ran eight hours per day, that would be over 170 million items per day, more than a third of US mail. So something's missing from those numbers, somewhere. Some questions to be asking: is there more than one type of machine (probably so)? Can some sort more mail than others (again, probably so)? Is "10 percent of its inventory" a meaningful figure, or are these mostly larger machines ?

MSN doesn't need to be posting press releases from the WH.

[uponit7771]

30. +1, good catch !!