Date: Fri 07-Nov-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

post-office-mail-automation

Full Text:

Automation Moves Mail And Customers Must Adapt ("The Machine Doesn't Know

Where You Live!")

(with photos)

BY DOROTHY EVANS

Once upon a time Newtown was truly a rural town with a limited population. A

place where everyone knew everyone, and your mailman knew you better than

most.

In fact, he probably sorted your mail himself before delivering it. Over time,

he might have even learned to identify your regular correspondents.

When that lilac-scented envelope with the illegible handwriting arrived in the

mail room, he knew that letter had to be from your great aunt Ethel. She

always wrote in fancy, spidery script and she never got the address quite

right. But he delivered her letter anyway.

If you were sick, he brought your mail to the door. If you were away, he would

save it for you or give it to a neighbor who offered to take it.

But time has passed, bringing tremendous growth and change in the industry.

Now e-mail, Federal Express and the United Parcel Service offer competitive

services affecting the long-established US Postal Service mail delivery

system.

The result is that the US Postal Service has been transformed into a private

enterprise operation, run on a cost effective basis. Its employees and

customers have had to adapt to this change, sometimes grudgingly.

Struggling With Volume

These days, the postal mail delivery system is big business.

Consider that there are more than 8,000 residential Newtown and Sandy Hook

households and 2,000 post office box holders (combination business and

residential) receiving approximately 90,000 to 100,000 pieces of mail daily.

No wonder Newtown Postmaster Dick Maguire rolls his eyes when faced with the

monumental task of moving such a huge volume of mail every day.

"Letter automation is the only thing that keeps us afloat," Mr Maguire said

recently, reflecting a view that has been adopted by postal administrators

since the 1982 Congressional decision to turn the United States Post Office

into a private business.

For Newtown customers automation has been mostly for the best, but not always.

The good news is that alongside periodic rises in postal rates, mail delivery

has kept up with the town's burgeoning population.

The local post office on Commerce Road is handling the huge volume of letters,

magazines and catalogues very nicely, partly thanks to the incorporation of

bar codes and zip+four codes on business pieces.

Automated machinery designed to read the zips and bar codes has been installed

at the central Bridgeport office, so that mail arriving in Newtown's post

office has already been pre-sorted according to Newtown carrier routes. This

eliminates a time-consuming job that was once performed by mail clerks.

Preliminary sorting has already been accomplished in Bridgeport when the day's

mail comes in the Newtown office at 6:15 am. Now it is ready to be sorted for

sequence along the route.

Delivery Sequence Sorting

What the Newtown office must do is take those pre-sorted mail packets and sort

them again according to sequence of delivery along the actual carrier route -

and, except for automation, that could take all day, Mr Maguire stated.

"We got two machines in June 1996 and a third one five months ago," he said,

referring to three state-of-the-art Carrier Sequence Bar Code Sorters (CSBCS)

that now occupy the rear portion of the Newtown Post Office's huge mail room.

"Each machine can sort and spit out 34,000 pieces an hour," he said.

An early morning visit to the Newtown Post Office mail room last Friday

provided an opportunity to see just how the automated system works.

It was a "typical day," said employee John Martus, as he worked at one of the

two operating CSBCS machines. The third was "down" for an adjustment.

He and Anthony Gentile, another employee, were loading bunches of letters onto

a 20-foot conveyor belt that fed the letters into the computerized sorting

machines.

After going through the computerized scanning machine, the letters were kicked

onto a return track, turned around at the opposite end, and then sorted

automatically into delivery sequence order by household.

With no glitches in the system, the mail would be ready for loading onto the

Newtown carriers' trucks by 8:30 am.

"It works," Mr Martus said simply, appearing satisfied that there was no other

way the tremendous volume of incoming mail could be handled.

The speed with which Mr Martus and Mr Gentile and the two operating CSBCS

machines could move the mail was, indeed, impressive.

With a loud, continuous riffling sound like the shuffling of cards, the sorted

letters kept hitting the barriers before being shunted into carrier bins.

They went by in a blur, almost too fast to be seen individually.

Fast Machines, Slow Hands

While acknowledging that automation is what keeps the mail moving and postal

rates competitive, post office employees admit the CSBCS machines do have

their problems.

For various reasons, they do not always perform at optimum rates.

"Most days we're operating at 60 percent automation efficiency, though

sometimes we get up to 80 percent," said Newtown postal supervisor Peggy Shab.

A large portion of the letters that go through the CSBCS machine are business

mail, typed and bar coded, and, unless the printing quality is poor, the

machine has no trouble reading and sorting it.

What slows down the process is hand-sorting. This results when the CSBCS

machine "kicks out" letters for any one of the following circumstances:

An improperly addressed envelope that cannot be read by the computerized

scanner

A damaged envelope or an improperly sealed envelope

A snag or rip caused by a window envelope becoming caught somehow in the

machinery

A certified letter needing the carrier's attention for signature

Forwarding address needed

Temporary "Hold" order on mail

Mr Gentile was less than enchanted with the way he saw his CSBCS machine

working last Friday, and he was not happy with the general trend toward

down-sizing.

"I don't like to see so many damaged letters. They're pushing toward

automating everything and getting rid of all the workers," Mr Gentile said.

Postmaster Maguire, however, maintains they must automate to compete.

They would like to keep the percentage of mail that needs to be hand sorted at

or below 20 percent but, unfortunately, reaching that goal is not always

possible.

"It's a labor intensive business," said Mr Maguire, and automation is the key

to being profitable, which translates into stabilized postal rates.

Before 1982, it was, "How much money did you spend last year, so how much do

you need next year? $500 million? OK, you've got it," said Congress.

Mr Maguire said that now the post office is struggling to cope with all the

economic factors faced by any private company.

"We've got built-in cost inflation, we've got contracts, we've got rising

gasoline and heating oil costs," he said.

"So we're down-sizing and riffing just like everyone else and automation is

what makes that possible."

And what will stabilize postal rates for the future?

"Customers using a correct delivery format," Mr Maguire answered.

"Address Hygiene"

Remember, Mr Maguire said, sorting of mail is automatic and "the machine

doesn't know where you live."

Customers must use correct address format, he said: House number and street

name should be written clearly on the second line from the bottom.

Or, if mail is to be delivered to a post office box number, then that

information should appear on the second line from the bottom.

"The machine reads up," Mr Maguire said, and delivery sequence sorting is done

according to the information the CSBCS machine does or does not pick up while

reading that particular line.

For example, he said "the stretch of Route 6 from Main Street to Mount

Pleasant Road to the Bethel line is four miles. And most people just use the

address `Danbury/Newtown Road' with no house numbers."

"When the machine scans that line and there is no number, it just kicks the

letter out again and we have to hand sort later."

"Some people have lived here 25 years and they still don't use their house

numbers. When I first came here, Newtown had very few house numbers. It was

haphazard. People made up their own addresses using a family name or something

cute they wanted to include," Mr Maguire said.

It was only recently that "we received a printout from the town assessor

noting exactly who lived on what street and what the correct, assigned house

numbers were."

"Now people say to me, `I've lived here 25 years. You should know where I

live.'

"I look at them and say, `Well, I've lived here 15 years and do you know where

I live? No. Well, I don't know where you live either.' Maybe no one does," the

postmaster commented with some frustration.

"It's not like it used to be when Jim Crick or Art Titus were carriers [for 40

years]. Now, 50 percent of our carriers come from Waterbury and Bridgeport."

"Things have changed," he understated.

P.O. Box Protocol

One sure way to experience problems with your mail delivery is to use dual

delivery addresses - both a street address and a post office box number - in

the address format.

Postal recommendations state that if customers choose to use dual addressing,

they should be sure that the place where they want the mail delivered is

written on the second line from the bottom.

Never write the two designations (street address and post office box number)

together on one line as that will only confuse the machine.

Although the computerized sorting machine can read upper and lower case

letters, it really "prefers" all capital letters, a US Postal Service handbook

states.

Script and punctuation only make scanning more difficult.

Business customers are urged to pre-barcode their pieces to receive automation

mailing rates, thereby reducing their postal expenses.

Catalogue Avalanche

Late deliveries are caused by a number of problems that can happen anywhere

along the system.

Snafus in Bridgeport may mean that the mail is not received in the Newtown

office on time.

One or more of Newtown's CSBCS machines may be "down."

But mostly, late delivery days are the result of the sheer volume and bulk of

the mail coming into the Newtown Post Office, especially of catalogues.

It will "loosen up" at Christmas time, Mr Maguire said, because the holiday

gift catalogues will have stopped coming and "people don't send cards as much

as they used to do."

Catalogues are responsible for most of the volume during September through

November, he pointed out.

"Each carrier has only one route and averages between 475 to 515 stops along

that route," said mail room supervisor Peggy Shab.

"We try to keep it at that level and will add more carriers if necessary."

Nevertheless, the late deliveries that irk some residents seem to be

inevitable given the complexity of the system.

"We're in the middle of change right now and it's not working smoothly yet,"

said Mr Tranquilli, a retiring Sandy Hook carrier.

Furthermore, with more than 22,000 residents living over a 60-square mile

area, Newtown can no longer be considered rural.