Newspapers have been arriving two to three weeks late, sometimes multiple ones show up at the same time, or they don’t ever get delivered.
To be clear, Holmes does not blame local post offices saying they’re as frustrated by this as she is.
Instead, Holmes points to restructuring at USPS.
Shutting down the Wausau mail distribution center in 2021 was part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s Delivering for America Plan.
Wisconsin and Viriginia were pilot states for the Local Transportation Optimization part of the plan that called for consolidating distributions centers.
“Once the Wausau hub shut down, all heck broke loose. Papers were all being routed to Green Bay, and that’s where we feel most of the delivery issues have stemmed from,” said Holmes. “Probably the lack of employees down there, and the mass amounts of mail being shifted from Wausau and other hubs over to Green Bay. I don’t believe that they can handle that amount of mail and newspapers coming through there and deliver them in a timely fashion.”
The issues with the U.S. Postal Service delivery delays are costing the Lakeland Times thousands of dollars.
While she can’t know every reason someone unsubscribes, Holmes estimates they’ve lost nearly 500 subscribers and $100,000 from subscription cancellations over the past four years.