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Editorial
Time is short for Christmas holiday mailings
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Don't look now, but Christmas is only 10 days away.
That means, if you're going to mail a present Parcel Post to Grandma in Michigan or nephew Joey in Texas, it had better be on its way.
If you want to spring for first-class, you have until Tuesday. Priority Mail should get there in time if sent by Wednesday and if you're really a procrastinator, Express Mail sent a week from now, Dec. 22, still has a good chance of getting there by Christmas.
The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to allow some 4,000 post offices, including several in Southwest Nebraska, plus a major processing center in North Platte, to remain open while congressmen and senators work to keep them open.
Behind the USPS's financial problems is a requirement that the service pre-fund future employees' retirement health benefits. Critics say the payments are justified because of costly employee contracts and benefits.
But postal service is one of the basic functions of government.
In fact the U.S. Postal Service has been delivering Christms cards for 236 years.
Some other numbers:
16.5 billion -- Number of cards, letters and packages to be delivered between Thannksgiving and Christmas Eve.
801 million -- Number of pieces of mai processed on Dec. 20, the busiest mailing day of the year.
551 million -- Average number of pieces of mail processed daily.
589 million -- Average number of pieces of mail processed daily during the holidays
30 million -- Pounds of mail the Postal Service will process for oversease military installations, including war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq.
155,000 -- Number of vehicles used to transport holiday mail.
2.5 billion -- Number of holiday stamps the Postal Service has available this year.
97 million -- Number of customers who visit a Post Office during the holidays.
47.2 million -- Number of customer visits to usps.com during the holidays.
4.7 million -- Number of shipping labels printed from home and office using Click-N-Ship during the holidays.
Regardless the cause of its problems, postal service is still vital to our society and must survive in some form.