U.S. Postal Service cuts hours

By Carrie J. Sidener

Published: November 21, 2008

The U.S. Postal Service has reduced the hours of operation at six post offices in the Lynchburg area, a response to the economic downturn as well to the growing number of people who use online bill payments and other com-puter transactions.

 
The U.S. Postal Service has reduced retail hours at 31 post offices in its Southwest Virginia District, which includes the Lynchburg area.
- In Amherst and Altavista, post office hours have been reduced by 30 minutes, to 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; and by an hour on Saturdays, to 10 a.m. to noon.
- In Evington, the post office hours have been reduced by 90 minutes, to 8:30 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday; and by two hours on Saturday, to 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
- In Gladys, the post office hours have changed to 8 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday; on Saturday, hours have been reduced by 90 minutes, to 8 a.m. to 10 a.m.
- The Rustburg post office hours have been reduced by an hour to 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
- The Lynch Station post office hours have reduced by an hour to 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1:30 p.m to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and remain unchanged on Saturday.

More than 80 of the 928 postal service offices in Virginia have seen their lobbies’ retail-service times shortened, said Cathy Boulé with the U.S. Postal Ser-vice’s Richmond District.

In Central Virginia, post of-fices in Amherst, Altavista and Rustburg, among others, have seen their hours curtailed. No post offices in the city of Lynchburg have been affected.

The changes are happening on a case-by-case basis after talking with local postmasters and cus-tomers about walk-up traffic, Postal Service spokesman David Walton.

Increasing fuel costs in fiscal 2008, coupled with a decreased demand for retail service and increases in the number of peo-ple using the postal service Web site (USPS.gov) drove the deci-sion to reduce hours, he said.

“We are trying to make cuts across the board,” Walton said. “We can save by adjusting retail hours. We are making such minor changes that people won’t even notice.”

The Postal Service lost $2.8 billion on revenue of $75 billion in fiscal 2008, which ended Sept. 30, said spokesman Gerald McKiernan.

“We saw a decrease of 9 bil-lion pieces of mail in 2008 com-pared to 2007,” McKiernan said.

Despite the decrease, the ser-vice will not be closing offices or firing workers, officials said.

“In 225 years, we’ve never laid anyone off,” Boulé said.

The Postal Service has offered voluntary early retirement to 156,000 of its nearly 685,000 workers, McKiernan said. Thus far, at least 3,685 have accepted the offer.