Mail routes could change with economy

INDIANAPOLIS – Think you know what time your mail arrives each day? Guess again.

The U.S. Postal Service is reviewing all of its city routes nationwide and changing some of them to cut costs because mail volume is dropping during the recession.

Nationwide, the changes are expected to affect as many as 50 million addresses on 85,000 urban routes. Rural routes already get reviewed each year.

“It should be pretty seamless to customers, except they could possibly see a difference in delivery times,” said Al Eakle, a USPS spokesman for the Indiana District.

The route reviews began last month and should be finished by the end of February, Eakle said Thursday. Customers, depending on where they live, might already be seeing changes as parts of some routes are consolidated into others.

Some letter carriers are saddened by the changes. Bloomington’s Darlene Meyer said she has watched children grow up, kept an eye on homebound customers and returned escaped pets during the nine years she’s delivered her route.

Meyer’s is one 2,700 urban routes under review in the Indiana District, which includes about 670 post offices and covers the entire state except for part of southern Indiana.

Eakle said the economic downturn affects the Postal Service just as it would any enterprise because businesses have reduced mailings to cut expenses. Through the first eight days of 2009, mail volume in Indiana fell 15 percent to 482 million pieces, compared with 567 million pieces during the same period last year.