USPS Installs State-of-the-Art Sorting Machine in Huntsville Facility
Last year, the U.S. Postal Service endured a mountain of criticism, particularly around the holiday season.
Slow deliveries. Non-deliveries. Packages lost. Mail delivered to wrong addresses.
The Huntsville Processing and Distribution Facility Automated Delivery Unit Sorter team strikes a pose before the start of their afternoon shift. From left, Aretha McNealey, Jill Gonzalez, Katrina Pleasure, Heather Rogers, Yalonda Williams, Janina Hicks, and Laquita Mitchell. (Photo/David Walton)
Much of the problem, obviously, was pandemic-related. Staffing was compromised due to employees being sick or staying home due to fears of catching COVID-19 in the workplace. And the mail volume increased as people shifted to online shopping instead of in-person shopping.
To help alleviate a repeat of last year’s troubles, the Huntsville USPS Processing and Distributing facility includes one of the country’s first new package sorting machines to greatly increase efficiency and volume.
“Last year, we were caught off guard as was everyone,” said Postal Service spokesman David Walton. “But this year we are making changes and improvements across the board to provide better service.
“And we’re already seeing some early results.”
The Automated Delivery Unit Sorter, which has been in operation here since June 27, processes up to 4,500 packages per hour and is 12 times faster than the previous manual sorting system. The Huntsville ADUS is one of three installed nationwide but 118 will be in operation by November in time for the busy holiday season.
Walton said the new machines are a part of a comprehensive, 10-year plan called “Delivering for America.” The plan includes $40 billion in investments such as new package sorters and facilities that will modernize and improve the Postal Service’s infrastructure.
In addition to this, an additional 46 annex facilities are being leased within 5 miles of regular facilities across the country to accommodate holiday surges and overflow of packages. As the plans for “Delivery for America” are implemented, the Postal Service has set a goal to meet or exceed 95% on-time delivery across all mail and shipping product classes.
This plan comes a year after the COVID-19 pandemic created an unprecedented surge in online shopping and culminated with a historic volume of packages for the 2020 holiday season.
During last year’s holiday season, USPS delivered a record 1.1 billion packages despite employee shortages caused by the pandemic. The Huntsville facility processed more than 250,000 packages alone.
The Postal Service its service performance numbers in the second quarter of this year increased in numerous categories as first-class mail marketing mail and periodicals were all delivered on time at least 6% more often than the first quarter of the year.
Although the ADUS system is replacing manual sorting at the Huntsville facility, no employees at the facility (or any facility across the country) will lose their jobs because of the new machine.
Katrina Pleasant, a Huntsville postal worker since 2016, said the new machine has made her workday more productive while also lightening the load labor wise.
“Before, we had to manually retrieve all the boxes and sort them into the different bins for each city and each route,” she said. “Now that we have the machine, everything is automatic and we can do over 30,000 packages a day.
“We don’t have to do any overtime or 12-hour days anymore. It’s much easier and faster now.”
