Hustling to fulfill holiday wishes
‘Month of December is one long day,’ but postal carriers work to deliver holiday cheer
I t was 21 degrees on a recent morning, and 58-year-old Dave Colbert said he was “in for a cold one” as he climbed into the driver’s seat of his U.S. Postal Service van, a holiday workload of 648 deliveries stacked behind him.
Colbert works at the Ellicott City post office, which handles between 150,000 and 200,000 pieces of mail every day, according to postmaster Howard Hines.
The office averages between 5,000 and 7,000 packages, or parcels, daily – a number that triples over the holidays.
“This time of year, we have 15,000 to 18,000 parcels per day, which is exceeding what we had around this time last year by 20 percent,” Hines said. The station typically reaches the 15,000 mark the week before Christmas, but this year it hit that number the week before Thanksgiving.
Carriers put in “extra leg work” during the holidays, said Hines, who arrived at the post office at 6 a.m. on a recent day with about 10 days left before Christmas.
Colbert, a Clarksburg resident, started his deliveries at 7 a.m. and returned to the station an hour later to prepare for his usual route on the other side of U.S. 40, behind H Mart grocery store. Some carriers were starting between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m.
“My route is near the office, so I don’t think it’s necessary for me to get here that early,” Colbert said.
The branch has 48 city carriers and 60 rural carriers, Hines said, including parttimers who work four- to eight-hour days.
Inside the warehouse-sized mail room, 25 clerks take mail through an obstacle course of scanning and sorting, organizing postcards, letters, flats and parcels by route and rural or city destinations. In recent weeks the holiday mail has traded off-white envelopes and brown boxes for brightly colored letters and festive wrapping paper.
“In November and December, the number of parcels are greater and with the manpower we have, we might have to work a little bit longer,” Hines said. “Between October and January is the busiest time of year because a lot of people are ordering gifts and we get returns after Christmas.”
Before entering the field in 1995, Colbert said, he worked in retail, but saw the Postal Service as a good way to enter the middle class and receive benefit and retirement opportunities. He has had the same route for the past 14 years, which he said allows him to get to know his community.
“You get to see people up close regardless of their stage in life,” Colbert said. “I look to make them happy, but at the same time, I stay in my lane. I don’t judge. You also follow certain patterns: Some people are always gone on vacation or I know to be alerted if Miss Gladys doesn’t come and get her mail at a certain time.”
HeartLands Village at Ellicott City, a retirement community, was Colbert’s fourth stop that day, when he greeted the receptionist with a smiling face and a chipper “Good morning!”
See CARRIER, page 4
Colbert works at the Ellicott City post office, which handles between 150,000 and 200,000 pieces of mail every day, according to postmaster Howard Hines.
The office averages between 5,000 and 7,000 packages, or parcels, daily – a number that triples over the holidays.
“This time of year, we have 15,000 to 18,000 parcels per day, which is exceeding what we had around this time last year by 20 percent,” Hines said. The station typically reaches the 15,000 mark the week before Christmas, but this year it hit that number the week before Thanksgiving.
Carriers put in “extra leg work” during the holidays, said Hines, who arrived at the post office at 6 a.m. on a recent day with about 10 days left before Christmas.
Colbert, a Clarksburg resident, started his deliveries at 7 a.m. and returned to the station an hour later to prepare for his usual route on the other side of U.S. 40, behind H Mart grocery store. Some carriers were starting between 5:30 a.m. and 6 a.m.
“My route is near the office, so I don’t think it’s necessary for me to get here that early,” Colbert said.
The branch has 48 city carriers and 60 rural carriers, Hines said, including parttimers who work four- to eight-hour days.
Inside the warehouse-sized mail room, 25 clerks take mail through an obstacle course of scanning and sorting, organizing postcards, letters, flats and parcels by route and rural or city destinations. In recent weeks the holiday mail has traded off-white envelopes and brown boxes for brightly colored letters and festive wrapping paper.
“In November and December, the number of parcels are greater and with the manpower we have, we might have to work a little bit longer,” Hines said. “Between October and January is the busiest time of year because a lot of people are ordering gifts and we get returns after Christmas.”
Before entering the field in 1995, Colbert said, he worked in retail, but saw the Postal Service as a good way to enter the middle class and receive benefit and retirement opportunities. He has had the same route for the past 14 years, which he said allows him to get to know his community.
“You get to see people up close regardless of their stage in life,” Colbert said. “I look to make them happy, but at the same time, I stay in my lane. I don’t judge. You also follow certain patterns: Some people are always gone on vacation or I know to be alerted if Miss Gladys doesn’t come and get her mail at a certain time.”
HeartLands Village at Ellicott City, a retirement community, was Colbert’s fourth stop that day, when he greeted the receptionist with a smiling face and a chipper “Good morning!”
See CARRIER, page 4
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