Postal Issues Delay Delivery

If you have the Milton Times home delivered in Milton, you already know it arrived Friday, July 29, instead of Thursday.

We began getting calls from subscribers early in the afternoon of the 28th. One after another asked whether there was a problem with his or her subscription. After a number of these calls, I phoned across the street  to the post office, asking for Amy Carter, manager of the Milton office.

Although I couldn’t reach her, I discovered that no one would get the paper that day because the entire delivery had been sent to visit Boston.

Personally I think this is part of a scheme to encourage newspapers to find alternate methods of delivery and decrease the mail volume to a greater degree.

In case you haven’t received a piece of mangled mail lately, let me tell you: It’s on the way.

The post office has spent millions (or billions) of dollars on new machines - called FSS machines - that are supposed to sort the mail.

The Milton Times has been delivered on Thursdays to mailboxes in Milton for the past 15 years. When we began 16 years ago, the newspaper was mailed with a bulk imprint.

But within a few months we began the process of qualifying for a periodical permit (it was called second class back in those days.) We kept documentation of every dollar received for a subscription and filed all the forms.

The reason we worked to meet the mailing requirements is that periodicals are supposed to be treated with priority and delivered quickly.Those were the days my friend, I hoped they would never end.Back in the early days of the Times existence, my son (who was in high school) would pick up the copies of the newspaper several hours after we went to press. Then he and I and anyone else I could rope into the work crew would label the mail copies and sort into bags by carrier route.

This entry was posted on 29. July 2011 at 12:47 and is filed under behind the news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.