BELGRADE — Ongoing delivery issues with the United States Postal Service (USPS) have Belgrade residents wondering once again, where’s our mail?
"I’ve been from Florida to Texas to Montana to Wyoming and back down to Georgia—everywhere else in North America they deliver from Monday to Saturday," says John Whittaker.
Having moved to Belgrade from Wyoming, Whittaker says he’s spent his first months here fighting for reliable mail delivery. He says the USPS delivery debacle has even affected him financially, paying costly postage to re-deliver checks that never arrived.
"It does hurt the community. I’m not going to lie; I was eating a lot of ramen noodles for a few days after that," says Whittaker.
While visiting John’s building, his neighbors told me they also haven’t received their mail consistently.
"A lot of these people are senior citizens that live in this apartment complex, and they get their medicine delivered through the mail too," he says.
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Reaching out to national representatives, Whittaker says he was told that package delivery has been contracted out, but that USPS wouldn’t disclose who.
"And I said, I don’t understand this, you’re not the Secret Service. Who did you hire? It’s taxpayer money. These people are driving around in your postal vehicles, so we have the perception that it's you, the postal service, that’s not giving us our mail," says Whittaker.
I reached out to USPS officials myself, asking about package volumes, delays, and contracted workers. They say:
Montana is supporting the national trend for packaging and shipping volume increases seen across the postal service over the past decade. During times of heavy package volume, we flex our available resources to match the workload. We appreciate the patience of our customers and the efforts of employees as conditions change on a day-to-day basis.
No further information was provided regarding the contractors responsible for delivering packages. Whittakker says:
"It’s like I walked into a parallel universe where it’s just whenever they feel like doing it. And it’s just wrong. I think they need to be investigated."
