However it wasn’t the buck hunt delaying the mail in Bemidji, a tiny city 100 miles south of the Canadian border the place welcome indicators are written in each English and Ojibwe and statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox tower in downtown. Since early November, Bemidji has been bombarded by a sudden onslaught of Amazon packages — and native postal staff say they’ve been ordered to ship these packages first.
The consequence has been chaos on the Bemidji put up workplace. Mail is getting backed up, typically for days, leaving native residents ready for checks, bank card statements, medical health insurance paperwork and tax rebates. Routes meant to take eight or 9 hours are stretching to 10 or 12. At the very least 5 carriers have stop, and the put up workplace has banned scheduled sick days for the remainder of the 12 months, carriers say.
“If we hold getting this quantity, plus Christmas coming, we gained’t survive,” one Bemidji put up workplace worker mentioned, talking on the situation of anonymity to guard her job. “We aren’t geared up for this.”
Mail carriers have “expressed plenty of concern in regards to the quantity of labor,” Mayor Jorge Prince mentioned after ending his personal breakfast at Raphael’s, a bustling diner lined with classic cookie jars. However the Bemidji Metropolis Council has no jurisdiction over the U.S. Postal Service, and the identical goes for the native fireplace marshal, who was referred to as in final Monday as a result of the Amazon packages had been stacked precariously excessive.
Dennis Nelson, a veteran mail provider, mentioned he acquired so annoyed watching a number of co-workers “breaking down and crying” that he staged a symbolic strike earlier this month exterior the put up workplace the place he has labored for greater than 20 years.
“I’ve to do one thing,” Nelson mentioned. “It looks like we must be carrying shirts that say ‘USPS: Delivered to you by Amazon.com.’”
Bemidji shouldn’t be the one place the place postal staff say they’ve been overwhelmed by packages from Amazon, the ever present e-commerce large. Carriers and native officers say mail service has been disrupted in rural communities from Portland, Maine, to Washington state’s San Juan Islands.
The scenario stems from a disaster on the Postal Service, which has misplaced $6.5 billion previously 12 months. The put up workplace has had a contract with Amazon since 2013, when it began delivering packages on Sundays. However in recent times, that enterprise has exploded as Amazon has more and more come to depend on postal carriers to make “last-mile” deliveries in harder-to-reach rural areas.
The Postal Service considers the contract proprietary and has declined to reveal its phrases. However U.S. Postmaster Basic Louis DeJoy has mentioned publicly that “rising bundle quantity” — not simply from Amazon, however from FedEx and UPS as effectively — is vital to the mail service’s monetary future. In a Nov. 14 speech to the Postal Service Board of Governors, DeJoy mentioned he needs the put up workplace to develop into the “most popular supply supplier within the nation.” And in recent times, the company has reconfigured its nationwide community of mail-sorting crops, bought an armada of eco-friendly supply vans and pressed a advertising marketing campaign in service of that aim.
In larger cities, Amazon has its personal distribution community, which takes a few of the strain off the put up workplace. However in rural areas, the place carriers drive miles of lonely routes of their private autos, the association has prompted issues.
Within the mountains of Colorado, biologists in Crested Butte are fighting the delay of time-sensitive samples, the Denver Submit reported in September, whereas mail carriers in Carbondale say they’re overwhelmed by Amazon packages. Different Minnesota cities together with Brainerd and La Porte have been hit onerous by Amazon previously, carriers mentioned. And in Maine, carriers organized a symbolic strike in protest of the Amazon onslaught a 12 months in the past — although a postal audit discovered that the delays had been attributable to staffing points, not prioritizing packages.
In Bemidji, the mayor has complained to native members of Congress, who say their means to manage the put up workplace is restricted. Final week, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) despatched a letter to DeJoy to ask about experiences that “Amazon is interfering with well timed deliveries and stretching the company’s already-overburdened staff too skinny.”
“As Postmaster Basic, you’re answerable for making certain that the Postal Service meets its service requirements, and it’s clear proper now that issues will not be working as they need to,” mentioned the letter, a replica of which was shared with The Washington Submit. “Getting into into contracts that your system can not assist is a breach of your tasks.”
Angela Bye, the Postal Service district supervisor for North Dakota and Minnesota, declined to remark. Postal Service spokesperson David Partenheimer mentioned the company is unaware of any vital supply points in Bemidji. “Like several prudent enterprise, we don’t publicly focus on specifics of our enterprise relationships,” he mentioned.
Partenheimer defended the put up workplace’s document in an e-mail, whereas conceding “a lot work stays to be accomplished.” He added that the put up workplace’s intention is “to ship mail and packages collectively in an built-in community.”
“The Postal Service is in its third 12 months of the Delivering for America plan,” he mentioned. “The group continues its give attention to enhancing service reliability … by modernizing the outmoded and getting old postal community throughout the nation, operational stabilization, and new aggressive product choices for our clients.”
Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson mentioned the corporate shares weekly forecasting information with the Postal Service, which “approves our forecasts.”
“We work straight with the USPS to stability our supply wants with their accessible capability,” Stephenson mentioned. “We acknowledge that, like us, different main retailers, small companies, and the communities they serve depend on the native USPS to ship, which is why we’ll proceed to collaborate on bundle quantity every week and modify as wanted.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Submit. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.
‘No approach of maintaining’
In Bemidji, postal staff mentioned that they had been advised that Amazon was coming to city for years. It lastly occurred one morning in early November, when the put up workplace was flooded with hundreds of Amazon bins and carriers mentioned they had been advised all of them needed to be delivered by the top of the day.
Carriers who beforehand had delivered dozens of small parcels a day plus paper mail abruptly needed to ship between 300 and 500 bins that they mentioned had beforehand been dealt with by UPS. One mail provider mentioned his mail truck was so stuffed with packages he might barely see out the left window. Some bins had been so huge they couldn’t match into mail autos. These had been saved on-site for buyer pickup in an space that quickly was overflowing.
For all the additional work, mail carriers weren’t making rather more cash. Rural mail carriers are paid just for the period of time the put up workplace estimates it’s going to take them to complete their jobs. And in Bemidji, the routes had been reevaluated in October, simply earlier than Amazon modified the whole lot.
Because of this, “we’re gifting away tons of free labor,” mentioned Nelson, the provider who staged the symbolic strike on Nov. 13. Although mail carriers aren’t legally allowed to strike — their union signed away that proper greater than 100 years in the past — others joined him within the pre-dawn chill, carrying indicators with slogans similar to “USPS belongs to the individuals, not Amazon.”
Mail carriers take their jobs severely — they take an oath of workplace upon assuming their roles — and really feel badly when the mail doesn’t get to individuals, mentioned three Bemidji postal staff who spoke on the situation of anonymity to guard their jobs.
“It’s onerous to like a job once you watch everybody depend on you and you may’t assist them,” one mentioned.
‘Personal enterprise takes precedence’
Mel Milender, treasurer of the Eckles Township Rural Hearth Affiliation, mentioned the chaos on the put up workplace has been “extraordinarily impactful.” After native governments assured him $400,000 in checks had been within the mail to assist cowl the current buy of $1.3 million in fireplace tools, Milender mentioned, the checks had been nowhere to be discovered.
“We didn’t get mail for 3 days,” Milender mentioned. “And we needed to pay payments.”
When Milender referred to as the put up workplace, he mentioned, “They advised me that they needed to take this contract with Amazon, and that individuals had been quitting, and so they didn’t have individuals to ship the mail and they’d get to me once they might.”
Others residents mentioned they’ve been ready on payments, playing cards from their grandchildren and insurance coverage funds. Although Chris Katko and his spouse dwell simply six blocks from the Bemidji put up workplace, they, too, skilled delays, together with on time-sensitive hospital payments, Katko mentioned.
When the proprietors of Patterson’s, an area haberdashery, noticed their mail provider, Jay, laden with Amazon packages, they mentioned they apprehensive about him — but in addition in regards to the checks they had been mailing to distributors. A neighborhood bookkeeper began driving 20 miles into city to go to the put up workplace, her husband mentioned, as a result of “the mail can’t be trusted.”
Mark Fuller, an area engineer, mentioned he worries about getting funds from shoppers on time. “If we’re ready on, , [$50,000 or $80,000] or $100,000 and we’re paying 9.75 % curiosity on the road of credit score, that may be fairly impactful over time,” mentioned Fuller, who prefers checks to digital funds to keep away from excessive charges.
Milender is aware of the native carriers are working onerous, he mentioned, however he thinks the put up workplace might have accomplished issues otherwise.
“I can’t imagine a personal enterprise takes precedence over the general public,” he mentioned. “What bothers me most is that we had no forewarning. The U.S. Postal Service knew that they accepted that contract and will have made positive that they made all people conscious of it.”
At Raphael’s, it’s clear individuals need the issue fastened. A bunch of retired schoolteachers who meet there twice every week had been discussing the way it’s now sooner to order their e-book membership picks from Amazon than from the native bookstore. The mail, they mentioned, is now so sluggish they name it “the Pony Categorical.”
“There are occasions after we don’t even get the mail,” mentioned Judy Phillips, a retired English instructor, as a result of “they should ship the Amazon.”
Listening to their dialog, an older gentleman who declined to provide his title stopped by their desk to share his personal sense of concern.
Amazon “packages take precedence over first-class mail,” the person mentioned, including: “That’s not proper.”
