Plan ahead to beat holiday mail crunch, postmaster says

Got mail? If you’re sending or expecting to receive holiday packages, Cambria Postmaster Brian Machado has some advice: Plan ahead, and not just for those inevitable mailing-deadline days.

For instance, he recommends not sending packages to North Coast residences where mail isn’t normally delivered (such as a second home or someplace that doesn’t have a mailbox).

And, of course, don’t send packages or bulky items to a residence that isn’t occupied during the day, especially if the home will be empty for several days. No matter how safe and secure you think your front-door area is, it may not be. Send that package to a neighbor, your work address or to the post office.

Machado said those admonitions are true even if packages are being ordered from and shipped by another service, such as United Parcel Service or FedEx, including some packages sent by Amazon.

Why? Machado said USPS delivers some packages for the other services.

Also confusing is the tracking notification that a shipping company sends via email or text to a customer’s phone or tablet. Machado said the email will say that the package has been delivered to the post office, but that package likely won’t be available for the customer to pick up until the next morning.

With the postal workers so busy at the front windows, it takes all afternoon and early the next morning for postal workers to process the incoming mail, which will be delivered or ready for pickup after that.

That includes a lot of parcels to separate and sort.

Packages arrive at the postal branch “on pallets that have 70 to 90 parcels on each one,” Machado said. One day last week, the Cambria branch got “three big pallets in the morning and three in the afternoon,” and those quantities are expected to grow exponentially during the holidays.

Those mailing deadlines? USPS.com recommends sending items via retail ground mail by Dec. 15, first class by Dec. 20, priority by Dec. 21 and priority mail express by Dec. 23.

Postal deliveries to North Coast homes and street boxes will be made Mondays through Saturdays, as usual, plus deliveries of packages and other special items during limited hours on Sundays during the holidays.

The Cambria postal branch is open 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; the San Simeon branch is open 11:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays.

This story was originally published November 22, 2016 at 8:45 AM with the headline "Plan ahead to beat holiday mail crunch, postmaster says."