Mail delivery delays linger, hurting many rural newspapers; postmaster general says more streamlining coming

The U.S. Postal Service usually experiences a surge in mail around the holidays. But the postal system, already hamstrung by employee illnesses and quarantines, cost-cutting measures implemented during the Trump administration, and increased mail volume due to the pandemic, is still dealing with bottlenecks and backlogs a month after Christmas.

"Art Sackler, who heads the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, which represents some of the nation's largest companies that rely on mail delivery, says the slowdowns pose a real threat to small businesses already on the edge financially," Quinn Klinefelter reports for NPR.

Rural newspapers depend on the Postal Service to arrive in mailboxes in time for late-week or weekend shopping, but "couldn't even drop 'em off [at some post offices]," Sackler told Klinefelter.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in a recent video to postal employees that further streamlining initiatives are coming this year. "The postmaster general's message worries some members of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees the Postal Service," Klinefelter writes. The committee's ranking Democrat last year, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, "says the Postal Service is just that – a service — and can't be run like a business."

"I'm particularly concerned that the postmaster general is focused primarily just on cutting cost," Peters told Klinefelter. "Certainly cutting cost is important. But you can't do it in a way that impacts service."