The journey of a pair of checks from Itta Bena to Greenwood highlights the lengthy distances local mail travels to wind up just down the road.
Postmarked April 30, the two checks — written to Leflore County to cover the cost of policing and picking up garbage in the 2,000-resident town — still hadn’t arrived at the Leflore County Courthouse a week later, causing some consternation for town officials.
One factor almost certainly contributing to the late delivery: The hundreds of miles that even local-delivery mail must travel. All letters posted from Leflore County — including those addressed to the neighbors next door — are routed to the U.S. Postal Service’s Jackson plant for sorting.
Mail for Greenwood addresses is then shipped to Grenada for further processing at a USPS plant there, Postal Service spokeswoman Enola C. Rice wrote in an email. The total round-trip journey: about 250 miles.
Rice said the standard delivery time for the route is two days. Since 2011, letters bound for addresses across the country have been traveling ever-greater distances as the Postal Service closes regional distribution centers to cut costs.
“Americans’ mailing habits have changed dramatically over the past decade, with total mail volume down by 26 percent,” Rice wrote. “First-Class Mail bearing postage stamps — the kind many of your readers send to pay bills or correspond with family — has decreased more than 50 percent.”
In response to that decline, the Postal Service announced in January that it was eliminating overnight delivery of local first-class mail and shutting down 82 plants — bringing to 232 the number of plants closed since 2012. According to the Washington Post, the changes have also meant that between 20 and 50 percent of the rest of first-class mail now takes a day longer to arrive.
Overall, Rice said delivery of first-class mail has slowed nationwide from an average of 1.8 days to 2.1 days to delivery, although she noted that other classes of mail — including priority mail and shipments of medication — haven’t been affected by the changes.
As the number of stamped letters continues to drop — the victim of online bill paying, email correspondence and other technological shifts — further changes could be in store for the classic letter.
Rice said the Postal Service is continuing to tweak its distribution network to adjust to declining volumes of postage. “The Postal Service simply cannot operate on a ‘status quo’ basis while the public’s mailing habits change dramatically.”
As for Itta Bena’s checks, Leflore County Administrator Sam Abraham confirmed that they arrived Thursday, just over a week after Itta Bena’s mayor dropped them in the mail.
“Wherever they went, I guess they did get back to Greenwood,” Itta Bena Mayor Thelma Collins said.
• Contact Bryn Stole at 581-7235 or bstole@gwcommonwealth.com.
