A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
Every day, the packages keep coming. Boxes are piled high Sunday in the mailroom at the Cloquet post office. Carriers delivered nearly 1,700 packages Sunday. Nationally, the busiest mailing, shipping and delivery week is Dec. 13-18.
Cloquet postmaster Todd Manisto checks over yet another delivery cart filled with boxes Monday morning.
Diane Mullen has been a rural carrier for 24 years. She was already coming back for more packages at 9 a.m. Monday morning. "There's always work to be done," she said.
Rural carrier Jess Hietala is almost hidden by boxes as she sorts letters and packages for delivery. Jana Peterson / Pine Knot News
rural carrier Katie Hitchcock
Before
after
Cloquet postmaster Todd Manisto gazed at the piles of boxes - some towering over even the tallest letter carriers - stacked in carts clustered in the mailroom at the post office Monday. "This is nothing compared to yesterday," he said.
Add all the gifts and holiday cards to everything else that people started ordering online during the pandemic, and these are busy times. The Cloquet office delivered 1,695 packages on Sunday alone, Manisto said.
On Monday, they were at it again. Manisto had popped into work at 12:30 a.m. Monday to accept the first shipment of boxes from Amazon, then went home to get a few hours sleep before coming back around 6:30 a.m. In the meantime, a clerk had arrived at 3 a.m. to accept more boxes and start organizing things, three more workers arrived at 4:30 a.m. and about 10 carriers came at 6:30 a.m. So it was organized chaos by 8:30 a.m. and many city and rural carriers were filling up their trucks with letters and packages.
At 9 a.m. Manisto said he was expecting a drop of about 600 packages any moment, with another 350 or so from UPS at noon and 250 or more from FedEx.
The Postal Service is projecting between 850 and 950 million packages will be delivered this holiday season nationwide.
"It's insane," said rural carrier Katie Hitchcock, who's been at her job for six years.
Jess Hietala agreed. "It's definitely insanity, but you get into the flow of it," Hietala said. On the bright side, she gets to see more of her customers this time of year. "They're usually waiting to sign, or excited about a package," she said.
City letter carrier Brian Oster delivered 207 packages Sunday in one trip around town. He was getting ready for another big day on Monday.
"Due to Covid, it's even more important for us to provide the goods to people," Oster said. "We start in the dark and we end in the dark."
Manisto admitted he's looking forward to more sleep, but he also finds satisfaction in all that his corner of the USPS does this time of year.
"Every night I think it's an accomplishment," he said. "And the next day we start all over again."
A reminder to those who still need to mail Christmas cards and packages - Friday, Dec. 17 is the deadline for domestic first-class mail, Saturday, Dec. 18 is the deadline for Priority Mail and Thursday, Dec. 23 is the deadline for Priority Mail Express.
