Post Office closings

Evidently, the United States Postal Service (USPS) is still having some troubles as they will be cutting some jobs and closing some post offices:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42256357/ns ... ?GT1=43001

I wonder if they are still thinking about cutting out Saturday mail delivieries also!!!

I got a little ticked today when I went to the Post Office near where I live to mail something. I didn't know they close at 4:30 p.m. I thought they closed at 5:00 p.m. like most other businesses. I got there at about 4:25 p.m. and didn't have time to finish my business there before they closed, so I have to go back later. Bummer!!!

Apparently they've asked Congress for permission to stop Saturday service, so that is almost certainly in the works. As I recall, the last batch of closures was limited to cities that had several post offices already. With 2,000 closing this time, I have a feeling that may not be the case. I wonder if some of the smaller rural areas will be losing their post offices this time.

Most of the rural post offices in my area feed through a slightly larger office (that actually has a smaller building than some of the others) the next small town north before it goes to the distribution center, so the closing of my closest post office would just make driving mandatory to do business with them (It takes about 90 minutes on foot to reach the one in town, or 5 minutes by car). I think this is the most likely result- people will just have to drive further to mail a box or something. Most towns are about 15 minutes' drive apart in my region since that was about a day's horseback ride back when they were founded. It's the really remote areas like Alaska that would have problems if closings occur, not most country hicks like me. Except maybe the ones who drive full-sized V8 trucks instead of a sensible car when they aren't hauling stuff.

The United States Postal System has announced that they will probably be closing over 3000 post office branch offices across the United States:

http://specials.msn.com/A-List/Lifestyl ... d=29688748

Are any of these Post Office branch closings near where you live?

Thank goodness from what I can see right now, all the post office branches in my area are safe .... for now, that is.

No, looks like nothing around here is closing. I didn't expect they would, really. There is not enough overlap in the closest post offices for closing any of them to be cost effective. USPS will likely focus the closures on large cities that have lots of post offices.