Where’s the mail? Postal Service’s Georgia facility dogged by problems

Residents, business owners, elected officials and postal workers continue to lodge complaints about greeting cards, insurance notices and prescription drugs taking weeks to arrive at their destinations.

Sandersville Mayor Jimmy Andrews said routine deliveries from Savannah, about 140 miles away, used to arrive at his Middle Georgia town overnight. After the post office reorganized and opened the Palmetto facility in February 2024, mail seemed to take forever to arrive.

Things have improved in recent months, he said, but still delivery can take four or five days.

“I guess the Postal Service has got a big operation in Palmetto,” Andrews said. “What used to go to Macon is going to Palmetto and is dispensed out from there. It‘s better than it was, but at one time it was terrible.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Statistics from the USPS bear that out.

During the first three weeks of April, 81% of all packages and letters sent through the Postal Service arrived at their destination within the time period promised. But only 71% of single-piece letters expected within two-days met the deadline.

That’s an improvement from 32% a year ago — just months after the Palmetto facility opened — but still way off the Postal Services‘ national average of 85%.

Prepandemic and before the reorganization, mail nationwide was delivered promptly around 92% of the time.

In 2021, then-Postmaster General Louis DeJoy unveiled his “Delivering for America” plan that called for a network of roughly 60 regional processing hubs across the country. He said the initiative would modernize the system, making it more efficient while saving money.

But the implementation was plagued with problems. Palmetto, the first of the regional centers to open, became the poster child of that dysfunction.

Credit: NYT

Credit: NYT

The criticism was — and remains — bipartisan, with lawmakers in both parties calling for DeJoy to step down during the worst of the mail delivery woes.

In February, DeJoy notified the Postal Service Board of Governors that it should begin the process of picking his successor. Then he abruptly stepped aside in March.

The Board of Governors on Friday announced it had chosen David Steiner to be the next postmaster general. Steiner, the former CEO of Waste Management and a member of the board of directors of FedEx, is expected to begin in July.

Congressman Mike Collins celebrated the announcement, calling it “long overdue.”

“Georgians have been subjected to lost packages, poor customer service and abject failure by the USPS for years,” the Jackson Republican wrote in a statement.

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

Credit: Hyosub Shin/AJC

U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff said he looks forward to meeting with Steiner to learn about his plans to address the delivery issues.

“He is going to have urgent and massive work immediately ahead of him to repair what Postmaster General DeJoy broke so incompetently in Georgia, and I expect to sit down with him and talk him through what my constituents expect and deserve from the Postal Service,” Ossoff, an Atlanta Democrat, said.

How the people who run the Palmetto facility are working to improve its performance is tough to judge. The Postal Service declined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s request to tour the facility and would not comment on why. A spokeswoman also would not disclose the names of elected officials who have been allowed in.

Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC

Credit: Nathan Posner for the AJC

For one elected official, there is a personal connection to the post office dysfunction. U.S. Rep. Rich McCormick said his own negative experiences started after an accountant, whose office is 2 miles from his home, sent tax documents via certified mail.

“It took four months and a congressional investigation to figure out what happened to it,” McCormick, R-Suwanee, said recently. “It actually went all the way down to Florida and was sitting there for months before it was finally sent back.”

During a House oversight hearing on the Postal Service’s issues in December, McCormick asked DeJoy why his calls to his local post office and later to USPS headquarters went unanswered. The postmaster responded by literally covering his ears, and the exchange with McCormick quickly went viral.

“I said, ‘I could have ridden a horse in about an hour from where it was mailed, and it would have been faster than what you guys did in four months,’” McCormick said. “And that’s just a result of their disorganization, their new routing systems and everything else.”

McCormick said DeJoy claimed the amount of mail cycling through the Postal Service was down, affecting its cash flow. McCormick now says that is partially a self-fulfilling prophecy: People are aware of the delays and sending less mail as a result.

And it’s not just customers feeling the effects. Mitchell said employees at Palmetto have long complained that the site is unsafe and overloaded.

“In my opinion, the building is not big enough,” he said. “Staffing is way off of what it should be. Logistically, the building is not set up right to have trucks come in and out efficiently.”

As if to underscore the problems with the facility, workers discovered the body of postal worker Sharon Barnes, 48, last August. Barnes died of apparent natural causes, but her body was not found for hours after she failed to clock out from her shift.

Ossoff echoed concerns from Barnes’ family and coworkers during a Senate hearing in December with DeJoy, citing a lack of cellular service inside the facility, which might have prevented her from calling for help.

The people who work at the Palmetto facility are frustrated, said Mitchell Taylor, president of the American Postal Workers Union chapter in Atlanta. The plan to consolidate postal operations into regional hubs isn’t necessarily a bad one, Mitchell said, but the execution was flawed from the start.

“What I’ve seen and what I’ve witnessed, the post office is trying to do too much too soon, and they didn’t have a really good game plan in place,” he said. “The building is too small for what they’re trying to accomplish. Logistically, it’s a nightmare.”

When the Palmetto site first opened, semitrucks with trailers full of mail would line up along Highway 29 waiting for their turn to unload. But what was envisioned as a 30-minute unloading period per truck ended up taking four to six hours, Mitchell said. That caused backups along the road and more delays. The warehouse doesn’t seem to have been designed for so much activity at one time.

As a blueprint for reform, the facility is “a total failure,” Mitchell said.

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez