In response: do not blame us carriers for the slowness of mail – or business difficulties

We believe that Hallmark's choice of $ 1.95 birthday cards a few years ago should cost $ 7.95. This may be a more decisive factor in closing a card store at Miller Hill Mall.

The letter expressed several problems with the postal service. However, postal customers can do something to help operators get mail to destinations faster.

First, the mail must be deposited in the collection box at the time indicated on the box. If this time is missed, the mail is automatically sent a day later. If it's a weekend, it could be two days later. Start a holiday Monday and you may be talking about three days later.

If you leave a letter in your personal mailbox for your operator to recover, in most cases, delivery will be delayed for one day. Indeed, your operator does not return to the post office before sending the day's mail to Minneapolis for its cancellation and processing. Local first class mail can easily take three days or more to be delivered, depending on the time or day the mail is put in the collection box or delivered to a carrier.

If you send or receive an article that can be followed, be sure to get the tracking number to track the progress of the article online. You will usually find this number on your receipt.

Money is still a problem for most businesses. Money became a real problem for the US postal service in 2009 when Congress created a $ 5 billion liability, to be paid annually over 10 years, to cover the health care benefits of postal retirees in 75 years . This means that Congress has asked the USPS to fund retiree health care for employees who have not yet been born. No other government agency or private company has ever been forced to do so. If the postal service did not have to pay this debt, it would earn money.

In acting on the new postal vehicles mentioned in the letter, they are needed to replace a fleet so old that at least two vehicles a week at the national level will ignite or that their rear ends will come off. You may have noticed that our new vehicles are much larger than the old ones. This helps manage the massive shipment of packages by Amazon and other online sales sites via the postal service. These online retailers explain why stores such as Younkers, Sears, ShopKo and Kmart have closed or closed.

We assume that the postal service also helps to put these stores out of business!

Arden Stabs and Kevin Westerlund are retired factors in Duluth.