Any present or former postal workers?

[...]

Is there anyone here that has worked for or is working for the USPS?  

I ordered a bundle of 100 Gospel of John/Romans newspapers from them a few days ago.  They print them in and ship them from Cadillac, Michigan.  The package was driven an hour north (50 miles) to Traverse City.  It was then flown 500 miles southeast to Warrendale, Pennsylvania, where it is right now.  The reason that I am confused is because I live in Livonia, Michigan, only 200 miles southeast of Cadillac.  The package needs to be flown back another 300 miles.

Why do they ship something 600 miles (out of state and back) out of the way?  I get a lot of things shipped and they do this at least 5 times a year; sometimes completely across the country.  Is there some kind of loophole that is being exploited that allows them to make more money without charging the customer more shipping costs, or do they make that many absentminded mistakes?  

Edited March 5, 2017 by Brother Stafford

[Alan]

They are shipped to Warrendale, PA in order to be checked by the NSA. They are then opened, copied, sent to a government facility to be checked by the thought police, ERA, ASPA, and then copied onto Hillary's e-mail account in order to have the Russians check it out.

Edited March 5, 2017 by Alan
grammer black-out by the NSA

[Invicta]

9 hours ago, Alan said:

They are shipped to Warrendale, PA in order to be checked by the NSA. They are then opened, copied, sent to a government facility to be checked by the thought police, ERA, ASPA, and then copied onto Hillary's e-mail account in order to have the Russians check it out.

I had a packet from USA arrive at heathrow and then went back to USA then to Heathrow, before finally arriviing

[Invicta]

A few years ago, my son in law ordered me a camera from Hong Kong.  He ordered it on 31st December at 9.30pm and  it arrived on the 4th January at 8.45am.  It must have been a holiday there because they didn't process the order till 2nd Jan.  When I order things from here, they often say "Allow 28 days for delivery,"

 

[Salyan]

Don't the delivery services have main lines they have to go through? As in, they might have to be shipped to the clearing centre for the area that includes Cadillac, then to the clearing centre for Livonia? Only that still doesn't make sense because you wouldn't think it'd be an out-of-state centre. At least that's what it looks like when you watch packages shipped from Amazon and such odd.

[fastjav390]

On 3/5/2017 at 0:55 AM, Brother Stafford said:

Is there anyone here that has worked for or is working for the USPS?  

I ordered a bundle of 100 Gospel of John/Romans newspapers from them a few days ago.  They print them in and ship them from Cadillac, Michigan.  The package was driven an hour north (50 miles) to Traverse City.  It was then flown 500 miles southeast to Warrendale, Pennsylvania, where it is right now.  The reason that I am confused is because I live in Livonia, Michigan, only 200 miles southeast of Cadillac.  The package needs to be flown back another 300 miles.

Why do they ship something 600 miles (out of state and back) out of the way?  I get a lot of things shipped and they do this at least 5 times a year; sometimes completely across the country.  Is there some kind of loophole that is being exploited that allows them to make more money without charging the customer more shipping costs, or do they make that many absentminded mistakes?  

My brother is a retired post master and apparently is has to do with where they sort out certain kinds of mail. Even he said it's messed up.

[2ndTimothy]

It does have to do with processing centers and the class of mail it was entered into the USPS system. State lines don't dictate where to most economically process it. Think of it this way, could an ant crawling on your ear get to your left hand if it was not touching your head (no matter how close your hand was to your head). If there was a large enough demand to develop a mail route connection those two hundred miles it would still be a process to develop and establish it. If those Gospel of John booklets were sent "media" mail (the cheapest rate available) they do go much more slowly as First class mail receives priority for using our man power to process the mail. When you get home from the store and you are in a hurry you put your ice cream away before you put your canned goods away. Media mail is restricted to printed matter, music and taped (cds) material. It cannot contain any advertisement or personal messages. This class is designed to save you big bucks mailing books and can be opened to verify its contents to fit the mail class. We inherited a government system in 1971 and became "quasi government" . We do not receive any money from the government but we are still largely controlled by it restricting how we run our business. For instance the USPS is still required to provide you with one free delivery point for your mail. We spend millions and millions of dollars driving mail around to distant rural mail boxes for which there is no charge except a 49 cent stamp. There are many other facets connected to delivery problems, many including poor addressing or mail preparation, wrongly addressed items. If you would really like to get a specific answer to your specific problem talk to your local post office or call 1800 ASK USPS. That works out  1 800 275 8777.

By  the way I am currently a postmaster in northern California.

Edited March 10, 2017 by 2ndTimothy

[...]

@2ndTimothy Thank you for taking the time to try to explain that for me.  I'm glad fellows like you are able to make sense of the process so we can all get our packages.

[fastjav390]

On 3/9/2017 at 11:39 PM, 2ndTimothy said:

 

By  the way I am currently a postmaster in northern California.

My brother recently retired as postmaster in Virginia. He was a route inspector too, whatever that is. When I was a child and he was a letter carrier I'd walk or bike alongside of him on his route. I'm not exaggerating, well, maybe a little, but his route seemed like it was over 10 miles long. Some people would leave him a cold drink in their mail box or bring us some when he delivered. He was only bitten one time by a dog on a route when I was with him. This after the lady said the dog wouldn't bite him. There was one famous person on his route but I never got to meet him. His name was Jean Shepherd, the guy who wrote A Christmas Story. He'd sometimes sneak me into the back of the post office ( the postmaster would find out but didn't seem to care) and let me watch him sort out mail while he chewed the fat with other postal employees. Some precious memories of those days.

Edited March 11, 2017 by fastjav390