These are real local heroes

There’s no business in America that relies on the United States Postal Service like community newspapers do. We rely on their hard work to bring our information to our communities.

Their package customers are fickle. Amazon uses the USPS because they’re getting a sweet deal.

We need the USPS.

The Postal Service is going through a lot of changes right now, but it’s great to know we can rely on the “boots on the ground,” the employees moving the mail to their final resting place in your mailboxes and the staff doing all they can to keep local Post Offices open as many hours as possible.

About five years or so ago, the Postal Service made changes to how they deliver mail. They used to make sure local mail was a priority. If you mailed a birthday card to your neighbor, they got it tomorrow. Now, it’s not guaranteed to make it across the street in two days.

We’re lucky to have great local postal workers who are doing everything in their power to make sure the mail moves to their local customers. Nothing is easy in a pandemic, and they’re literally covering every square inch of the community while many within don’t like to leave their house, except perhaps for the daily walk to the mailbox.

Postal workers are even more critical this year, as a huge number of ballots will move through their sorting machines and mail pouches. The local postal works can only control what comes on the truck, and they’re certainly up to the enormous responsibility.

Some big changes have taken place at the Post Office, and unfortunately none of them were made to make it easier at the local level. The powers that be fear losing the big business and don’t realize that it’s the little people that pay full rate for their stamps, packages and the local news.

As a newspaper, we do everything we can to make the local mail move, and our local post offices are partners in making sure our papers hit your homes as quickly as possible. We sure appreciate that, and we appreciate everything these local heroes are doing, not only during this pandemic but six days a week. As the saying goes, “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Bad weather isn’t the concern these days. It’s management that’s ignoring the vital reason for the US Mail, and that’s to link our people and our communities.