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Post Office braces for crush of holiday mail
Published November 26, 2006
Rudy Garcia doesn’t look like Santa Claus — there’s no red suit with fur trim and despite what may be a twinkle in his eye no one is going to mistake him for St. Nick—but when December rolls around he feels like Santa.
Garcia, the officer in charge of the Del Rio post office, isn’t alone. There are 55 suitable Santa substitutes working in the Del Rio office.
“To me this is the best time of year,” Garcia said. “My opinion is we’re Santa Claus every day for the whole month of December.
“That’s my attitude about it.
“There is nothing better. I used to be a carrier myself. There’s not a better feeling in the world when you knock on that door and make that delivery to that customer and you know that package is coming from your son, your daughter, your grandfather, whoever. You know it’s a Christmas gift because of the wrappings.
“I feel we touch everybody, everywhere, every day. Pretty much in a nutshell that’s what we do.’
Of course the Postal Service does a lot more of it in December. Del Rio postal patrons average send or receive 50,000 to 52,000 letters a day throughout the year, plus 15,000 to 18,000 pieces of flat mail like magazines and newspapers. It’s when you get to the parcel mail, normally 1,500 to 2,000 packages or so a day, that the Christmas difference really shows.
“During December parcels increase five or six-fold,” Garcia said. “You’re looking at 10,000 to 12,000, basically they’re Christmas gifts.”
“The public’s not aware of how much mail we handle at the Del Rio post office,” he said. “It’s a tremendous amount of mail.”
Now is when the Christmas rush begins for the post office.
“On Monday you can start seeing the increase of mail,” he said. “You can see your Christmas cards start coming through and you can see the volume pick up. Once we get around the 8th, 9th and 10th of December it’s in full force.”
It peaks generally the last Monday before Christmas, this year on Dec. 18. Nationally the Postal Service expects to handle an estimated 280 million cards and letters that day, triple the normal volume. A couple of days later, the 20th or 21st, the seasonal siege on the postal service peaks and begins to taper off a little.
Garcia has plans to ease the crunch on postal patrons a bit.
On Dec. 9 and Dec.16, the two heaviest mailing Saturdays Garcia is extending the normal 10 a.m. to noon hours to 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“My goal for those two Saturdays is to have three windows working at the same time,” Garcia said. “We also have a pickup door (for parcels) somebody will be manning.”
The final Saturday before Christmas Day is different, he said.
“We don’t consider the 23rd a heavy Saturday because by then it will be kind of late to mail stuff,” Garcia said. “Normally all we get will be express mail, last minute gifts.”
Monday, typically the post office’s busiest day of the week, will see some changes, too.
Garcia said starting Monday and for every Monday through the holidays there will be three postal clerks working at the front counter, instead of the normal two.
Garcia said the Del Rio post office gets a heavier than usual amount of international mail.
“It’s because of the guys at (Laughlin AFB),” he said. “Then we get local residents who mail out to their sons or their daughters or relatives who are stationed overseas.”
Mail going overseas to the Air/Army Post Office (APO) or Fleet Post Office (FPO) requires special handling. Mailers have to declare what’s in the package and fill out Customs forms.
“After 9/11 and anthrax and everything else we are so particular,” Garcia said. “Every customer is asked if there is hazardous material, anything liquid, flammable or anything else.”
Mail going to Mexico, however, requires no special handling.
All the mail to and from Del Rio goes through a regional mail processing facility in San Antonio.
‘If you’re mailing a letter to your mom across town you have to drop it in here,” Garcia said. “That particular night it goes to San Antonio in an 18-wheeler truck and it’s processed that night and it comes back the next morning to be delivered. We get it, in most cases, in a day or two, but no longer than two.”
Mail comes back from San Antonio already packaged and sorted for delivery to Del Rio’s 22 city delivery routes, four highway contract routes and 12,000 post office boxes. All together there’s about 28,000 points where the Postal Service delivers mail here daily.
Garcia said customers can help speed their mail by writing legibly and putting the correct zip codes on their mail.
“Things run so much smoother when we know where it is going,” Garcia said.
“Say you’re mailing it to Uvalde, (zip code) 78801. A lot of people will mean to write 78801, but they’ll write 76801—but that’s up in the Dallas area. When clerks read the zip code we separate it by zones, that’s why the zip code is so critical.”
Clerks are forced to make a decision sometimes where the package is really being sent. “Is it really going to Uvalde, or is it going to the zip code which is up in North Dallas?” Garcia said. “This is where customers sometimes get frustrated with us, but it’s not really our fault.”
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