Indiana Post Offices the USPS Wants to Close

[Jake46184]

Expanded Access Study List - Indiana

Only a government ran, unionized shop could lose money with the vast income potential of the USPS. Even when considering the impact of the Internet, only a hopelessly bloated, inefficient entity could lose money.

Is your post office on the list? Looks like mostly/all smaller burgs. Amo and Boggstown near Indy.

 

[hornadylnl]

I think mine was pretty much shuttered anyway.

 

[trophy hunter]

that sucks.. mines on there (canaan)

 

[Kirk Freeman]

Can't we just end the monopoly and let UPS, DHL and FedEx deliver the mail too?

 

[lovemachine]

Can't we just end the monopoly and let UPS, DHL and FedEx deliver the mail too?

It's almost happening now. UPS drivers actually deliver mail TO the post office. And then the post office delivers it.

 

[JStang314]

they are closing a lot of small offices with postmasters who have not been there long so they dont have to pay pensions....the upper level at the usps is just business stupid. Although a lot of letters and bills are no longer needed in paper version because of the internet, however they do a lot of things wrong. For example, they pay postmasters from Lafayette to run offices in Parke county when they could use more local postmasters. They pay these people a ton of money in mileage, etc when they have qualified people 5 minutes away. Many postal workers are horrified to make even the smallest mistake like scanning a piece of mail 2 minutes later than they should (they also get in trouble if they scan too early) when the upper level people are throwing huge amounts of money away.........it wont be too long and we will no longer have a usps which is too bad because that is a hell of a lot of jobs.

 

[PistolBob]

It's still the best deal in town. For less than 50 cents I can put a 1 ounce letter in the US mail system and rest reasonably assured that it will be delivered anywhere in the country in less than a week. That's a great deal.

 

[85t5mcss]

Don't forget no more than 2 can eat lunch together, and it has to be at a preapproved place. It's bad is all I can say. It's been going downhill for a while and the Internet is notthe issue here. Poorly run is the problem.

 

[buford t justice]

I can see them wanting to shut down some of these small town post offices ,like one town
near huntington I was through a while back.
Its post office was in a 40 year old run down house trailer and the town had 15 to 20 houses,Im sure the huntington PO could take over.

 

[Dr.Midnight]

It's still the best deal in town. For less than 50 cents I can put a 1 ounce letter in the US mail system and rest reasonably assured that it will be delivered anywhere in the country in less than a week. That's a great deal.

I've said this for years. Let's say I have a check that needs to go to California. By using the USPS, I can get it taken there for less than a can of Coke. It's the best deal out there.

As for the original question, my PO is not on the list. I heard on the radio yesterday that the USPS is considering closing 3600 offices nationwide. I heavily use the little one in my town, and I was scared to death it was on the cutting block. Looks like it may be safe.

I will say that there are a few on the list in areas I'm in frequently. I feel bad for those folks there because it will be a haul to the nearest PO if theirs shuts down.

 

[Bill of Rights]

IIRC, the USPS used to be the only government entity (and that, just barely) that made money. Then the Congress realized that fact and started tapping what profit they made to use elsewhere.

If anyone is a letter carrier and can verify this, I would appreciate it.

Blessings,
Bill

 

[confused89]

The town I use to live in was on the list. The post office was run out of someones house in that town. Then they moved it into the gas station. 1 person works there.

 

[inxs]

If you want a business to be poorly managed and not profitable all that is needed is a government subsidy or monopoly.....

 

[Indy_Guy_77]

they could probably keep most of these open if they'd streamline things...

Why not go to a 3-day / wk mail delivery system? Heck, even alternate the days it's done? Week 1 = M, W, F. Week 2: Tues, Thurs, Sat.

Or just keep it on Week 2 every week?

keep the intra & inter-state transport of the mail on the same schedules, keep the post offices open for package purposes, mail-drop off, PO boxes (which'd be delivered to every day), etc etc.

Noooooooooo, I guess that'd make too much sense.

-J-

 

[Litlratt]

After 30+ years, I recently retired from the Postal Service.
Obviously, I never went postal, though there were times that I wanted to kill people within inches of their lives.

The Postal Service is Constitutionally guaranteed. The intent was to provide service to ALL Americans, regardless of where they lived in this country. Our forefathers realized the costs associated with this endeavor, the price of a stamp was meant to offset those costs, not make the service self sufficient or money making. Most people still believe that the Postal Service is subsidized with their tax dollars, this isn't so. IMO, there shouldn't be anything wrong if it were subsidized. It would be one of the few government departments or services that actually provide for you on a "daily" basis.

The 1970 Postal Reorganization Act resulted in a number of changes to the Postal Service, previously the Post Office Department. It was a result of a strike by thousands of postal workers across the country.

At the local level, during my employment at a processing facility, I seen management go from a consumer based get the mail out attitude to a numbers based I want my bonus at the end of the year attitude. This results in waste as a result of decisions made to manipulate numbers, not process mail.
At the regional and national level, it appears they have succumbed to the bigger is better philosophy regarding processing plants, regardless of the fact that the larger plants have the worst performance. For example, Indianapolis has some of the worst "numbers" in the state regarding performance, cost, etc. yet the decision makers continue to absorb more mail (for processing) from surrounding communities, which results in a degradation of service to those communities.

@BofR
I had heard of something similar but never seen anything that would confirm it. I was made aware of a great financial burden placed on the Postal Service regarding retirement contributions but can't remember the specifics.


Also, I realize it's just a movie, but if you haven't seen "The Postman" with Kevin Costner, i highly recommend it. Imagine that all forms of electronic communication were disabled.

Regarding the OP. I disagree with closing small POs. I realize they aren't self supporting, but they do provide the Americans in those communities with the service our forefathers guaranteed.

 

[jeremy]

Mine is on the list...

 

[85t5mcss]

I have heard "talk/chatter" about a 5 day week instead of 6 for carriers. Don't know if it would ever happen. I don't even recall which days were no mail days. Sunday and Monday I think.

The union that protects the worthless are just 1 of the problems. Look at some of the mgmt in the branches. Some are just poor slobs who get doctors notes saying they can no longer carry, stand or do physical duties. So what do we do? Can't fire them, cant use disability so we promote them.

Time tracking, spending money on GPS so they can track them, followers tracking them, no lunch breaks with coworkers, require doctors note for weak bladder so you don't get in trouble for frequent stops to urinate, God forbid you eat some bad Thai food and have to stop. Yeah, it could be run a little better.

Recently laid off quite a few carriers and changed routes to help with payroll. We'll see what happens, I guess.

 

[g+16]

mine's not on list, if a coffee shop or donut shop was ran this way it would have folded long ago, yep managment is crap, only people I've ever seen fired in Indy has been some morons who slapped someone and brought a pistol in and put in his locker, and then bragged about it. Most upper managment don't know one piece of mail from the other, and most of line managment is to scared to do anything like write up any of the LAZY ones for fear of their jobs! None will be fired because of this if they don't retire they will be transfered to someplace else, the general public will be the ones put out by this, they will have to go to another post office, I'm just hopeing is still around till I retire, 5 more years and counting

 

[chraland51]

I hope they all get closed. I currently live in an apartment. Nearly every day I come home to find junk mail and advertisement newspapers jammed and wadded up in my box. Half the time, the covers on my magazines are damaged and sometimes even nearly torn off. I keep getting mail for previous residents ( I have lived there for nearly 3 years) and the delivery person just keeps putting it back into my box when I put it in the out-going box. Do not tell me it is their policy. I will not mention what eventually happens to those pieces of mail. I hope that they are not very important. The post office destroyed an expensive birthday present from my son a few years ago. The box looked like they had run over it a couple of times with a truck. They admitted there responsibility for destroying my gift and repaid me after I filled out some forms and brough in documentation as to the item's worth. What they would not pay for is what my son paid for overnite delivery. The condition of the item does not matter as long as the post office got it to me on time. He paid quite a lot to get it to me on time only to have the post office deny any refund since they did get it to me on time. They even had the gall to show me a third or fourth generation xerox copy of their policy for this type of occurence. On top of that, I had to deal with a severely overweight crippled woman who had speech difficulties and problems with her basic motor functions. How could I yell at someone like that for their crappy policies. It seems that the post office thinks that we need to accommodate them instead of it being the other way around. I have known some pretty ignorant people who worked at the post office who made much more than I was at the time for sorting mail.

 

[LeeStreet]

My opinion is to raise " junk " mail prices. Heck, some of it goes through the system for pennies each, & hopefully we would receive less letters begging for money, especially from the political arena.