Customers across southern Maine will be waiting on as many as 80,000 pieces of mail that will arrive late because of new U.S. Postal Service policies, the president of a local postal workers’ union said.
Rather than wait an extra 10 minutes for the mail to be ready, the trucks left the postal service’s Southern Maine Processing and Distribution Center in Scarborough exactly on time Monday morning, leaving behind roughly 80,400 letters that will be delivered late as a result, said Scott Adams, general president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 458. He estimated the processing center sorts approximately one million pieces of mail on a typical Sunday night.
Adams sent the Portland Press Herald information Monday morning outlining the amount of delayed mail broken down by destination. He said all the letters left behind had been sorted the previous night and just needed to be loaded onto mail carriers’ trucks for delivery.
A postal service spokesman said Monday evening that the union’s 80,000 figure was overblown. He also said the delayed letters were distributed later in the day and were not held until Tuesday.