It’s 7:30 am and you’re a letter carrier . . . so take a moment and imagine the following as a typical workday. First, you walk into the office, clock in, and check in with the boss. Then, you load up the vehicle with the mail that is already prepared for your route. Finally, at 7:45 am, you jump into the vehicle, drive off and begin delivering the mail. At no point are you required to manually sort mail. Is that day far off in the future . . . or, is it just around the corner?
Currently, Delivery Point Sequence (DPS) letters are automated to the delivery point so that the carrier can take it directly to the street. DPS mail is picked up by the carrier on the way to the vehicle and does not need additional manual sorting. The purpose of the DPS program is to reduce the amount of time carriers spend in the office manually sorting letters, thereby reducing cost and improving accuracy and speed of delivery. Since 1993, when DPS was introduced, the share of city delivery routes receiving DPS letters has grown to more than 99 percent and the share of rural routes has grown to 86 percent. On average, these routes receive 88 percent of their letters in DPS order. The Postal Service’s goal is to raise the DPS percentage to 95 percent by 2010. The chart below depicts how the share of DPS letters and manually sorted (cased) letters on city delivery routes has changed over time.
Loading ... Loading ...Delivery is the Postal Service’s largest cost center accounting for more than 40 percent of expenses, and having carriers manually sort mail takes time and money. Carrier routes are configured to take eight hours to complete, and those eight hours include time spent in the office . . . primarily manually sorting mail, as well as time spent on the street. According to the Postal Service, over the last 15 years, it has recognized over $5 billion in savings due to DPS.
Now, the Postal Service wants to replicate for flats — large envelopes, magazines, and catalogs — what is done for letters by implementing the Flat Sequencing System (FSS). The FSS will sort flats into delivery point sequence. In FY 2007, the Postal Service processed 52 billion flats and 80 percent needed to be sorted manually in the office by the carrier. The plan is for FSS to reduce the amount of time carriers spend in the office manually sorting flat mail. Although FSS is not quite ready for primetime, the Postal Service is currently piloting it at the Dulles Processing and Distribution Center in Virginia.
If the majority of the mail is sorted in delivery point sequence using automation, it will dramatically change how a carrier spends his or her workday. Remember, you are the carrier and now you have automated sorted bundles of DPS letters and FSS mail. There was no need to manually sort any of this mail in the office. You only had to pick up the mail and maybe a few parcels before you headed out on your route. What does this mean? Well, for starters, because carriers begin delivering mail earlier, carriers have a longer day out on the street. In addition, more time dedicated to delivering the mail will likely result in carriers being back in the office within their allotted 8-hour tour, thereby reducing overtime and late deliveries. Further, avoiding the evening rush hour traffic may result in decreased auto accidents. Finally, because the mail is delivered more quickly, customer service may be improved.
What do you think? Do you think that the days of manually sorting mail in the office are coming to an end? It took 15 years to realize the impact of DPS; will it take longer for FSS? Will increased delivery points and decreased mail volume have an impact? Can you think of some other challenges and benefits that may be presented because of DPS and FSS?
This blog is hosted by the OIG’s Delivery directorate.
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I have my doubts about the logistics of FSS also.
The FSS machines being deployed in our area will be 75 miles from my station. The FSS mail will have to be trucked down to us. In winter snow and ice will impead the roads. We are in a high denisity urban area, with daily traffic jams, tunnels, and bridges to cross. Currently our Express mail usualy does not arrive until after 10 each morning, and IOD’s deliver it to the carriers on their routes to deliver.
To make it work we would have to deliver the previous days FSS mail the next morning. But that would be delaying the mail…
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FSS is already an obsolete notion. With the drastic decline in flats, an undoubtly more decline in the future, why invest so much money in a declining classification of mail? The postal Service needs to look to the real future. It needs to take advantage of The Postal accountability and enhancment act and invest in infrastructure in Asia. This is the money place now and the future.
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First off, whoever blogged this garbage doesn’t get it. DPS hasn’t been in existence for 15 years. Second, keeping carriers on the street longer will actually increase the number of vehicle accidents, costing the PO more money. Third, longer delivery times equals more burning of fuel,again costing the PO more money. Fourth, mgmnt wants carriers to be more efficient and accurate, but they all bring back handfuls of messed up DPS, resulting in delayed mail. Fifth, the argument that customers will receive their mail earlier is only true for maybe the first half of the route, then it all evens out as carriers pick through mounds of mail. And lastly, the introduction of FSS only means adding more addresses to a carrier’s route resulting in, you guessed it, more hours in the office and on the street. Oh yeah, one other thing: the PO is beginning to install GPS units in LLVs. I thought the PO was going broke, but I guess they got a good deal on thousands of GPS units. BIG BROTHER is watching.
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DPS HAS been in existence for 15 yrs. Perhaps not where you are located, but it was just starting, in the city I work in, when I was hired in 1994.
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They still have money to burn, we all got teashirts today with an add on it for the po, of course no one will see it, or I should say not many will!
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The best point of all—the people making the rules have NEVER actually done the job. Injuries and accidents will most certainly increase due to the added physical stress and the attention needed to sort 2-3-or 4 bundles “on-the-go”.
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We didn’t get DPS till after 1996! And the problems we had then are the same problems we have now. So much for the accuracy. As for the time, the DPS has nothing to do with how fast the mail gets delivered. The carrier does. I can’t believe someone would print such an article. Then again, they put out the DPS machines. Oh well, so much for logic or common sense.
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They make it sound like DPS is such a wonderful thing. Sure wish these jokers would try juggling three or four bundles. Not to mention all the delayed mail due to dps errors. And the mess they call cfs now. Keep the blinders on. Tell everyone how wonderful those machines are and spend a fortune on some more!
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“This blog is hosted by the OIG’s Delivery directorate.”
Dictator was misspelled!!!!
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Soon I’ll not only be a letter carrier juggling 3 to 4 bundles of mail not to mention your accountables and parcles. I’ll also be able to work for the circus as a professional juggler.
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1. The system under FSS makes no provision for non-machinable circulars, ADVO, etc. I am reading tales posted by carriers where FSS has already come in of either having to case their circs, or work the non-machinable circs one at a time into their FSS flats, since carriers with walking routes can’t take a 4th bundle. This, of course, takes a lot more time and certainly isn’t covered in the DOIS.
2. I find it amusing that after all of this time with the different areas having FSS, that the PO still hasn’t written an SOP for carries delivering a park-and-loop delivery route. Working flats out of my arm, AND my bag??? How in the hell will that “save” time??
Ours is supposed to come in about Jan 2010. Can’t wait !!!
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FSS will be yet another automated nightmare Can you imagine a day after a holiday when every flat is worked.This will make curtailing mail at high volume times impossible. They can’t manage the dps volumes through the week they work everything and pay overtime on mondays and have us stand around by Wednesday I can foresee them putting advos and pennysavers together the day after a holiday and telling you it won’t take anymore time.
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The PO could care less about the health of carriers performing another circus act handling more bundles of mail in sub-zero weather 7 hours a day plus overtime forced down their throats for 9 hrs of street time. I wonder if the theory people realize after they put their kool-aid down, that vehicles running longer due to increased street time means more fuel. They like to crunch numbers so crunch 5 dollars a gallon then 6 dollars etc. With the dollar going down due to printing money for Wall Street banks and Stimulus funding the price of fuel will go up more then 5 or 6 dollars a gallon. Crunch the numbers now not when it happens in the near future.
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DPS is pretty good, but get this. On Long Island, management has decided that, in order to meet on-time goals, they send employees to neighboring offices with missent mail in the morning, then in the afternoon send employees out to deliver missequenced mail to mailboxes. However, they simply place these letters in the customer’s mailboxes, even if the customer has taken their mail in for the day. The reason management is spending all this money? I think it’s so they can get their bonuses for on-time delivery! Incidentally, this only applies to first class mail from Long Island to Long Island…if your paycheck comes from New Jersey and is delayed, it is not sent out in the afternoon. But a postcard from a real estate agent will get this special treatment!
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No, I never filed Workman’s Comp because I got a great office job for the last 12 years and it would have been almost impossible to link the carrier wear and tear after 12 years.
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FSS will be the death of the carrier. Spending nearly 8 hours walking the streets in sub-zero or 100+ temperatures will not be sustainable for a 25yrs+ career. Not to mention the additonal hours of being forced to work OT because USPS can’t manage to properly staff their offices. With 10+hours on the street, the body will start to fall apart. Injuries will increase 8-fold as well as increases in diseases such as arthritis. Those who do manage to retire as a career letter carrier will be too crippled to enjoy their remaining years.
Also, automated mail provides a lower quality of service. Vacants, movers, & holds are often left in sequence and delivered by unknowing subs. PARS is doing a great job, but expired forwards as well as UBBM are often delivered by unknowing replacements. It makes the USPS look bad and incompetent. As a poster stated above, management is too focused on quantity and not quality, all for the sake of making the numbers to get that bigger PFP. We are suppose to be a “service” to the public, and instead the USPS has become nothing but a managerial game of numbers.
FSS and DPS machines are obsolete when used in conjunction. It creates 4th bundle issues that result in costly manual sortation by carriers. If the USPS is to continue down the automation road, it must invest in equipment that handles flats and letters simultaneously – creating one bundle. So, stop throwing away billions on FSS equipment and buildings to house them. Mail volume will never return to its’ previous peak. The world is “going green” and the younger technology-friendly generation may never purchase a stamp. Wait for a more feasible one-bundle system to be developed. Don’t purchase machines that only do half the job and are not providing significant return on our investment. Stop the waste of billions of dollars. We are in no postiion to be squandering this money and with the current low volumes, we will not be able recuperate our costs for a long, long time.
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What about the Rural Carriers that are using their own vehicles to deliver in? Imagine trying to work 4 bundles, plus advos and parcels from the front seat of your Subaru or Blazer? Stopping at each mail box will be a two minute ordeal, not to mention if you have to leave the vehicle for a door delivery! Its unsafe, physical suicide, and mental insanity!
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My residential DPS is fine. My business DPS is a nightmare. Most of my 78 business addresses have suite letters or numbers. So all number 20 letters are together but suites A, B, C, are all mixed. Taking it to the street this way would be a nightmare, so I sort it all.(BEFORE HITTING THE STREET) You can’t sort this mail in the truck. If the Flats come this way Oh baby. I also agree with the person saying, Why buy all these FSS machines when you have 20 flats? Is that cost effective? duh!
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If this is true about DPS, why now in Northern NJ, currently in our office now, carriers are being sent out after returning from their own routes at 4 – 5 PM, to deliver 1st class mail from their DPS that was intended for a different route. Meaning letters missorts in town by the DPS.
Why instead of all this waste of gas, travel time at peak traffic flow hours and carrier time, not allow the carriers to take 15 minutes in the AM, case the DPS and pull all the NOV, forwards, and letters for other routes, give them to the proper route and end the mistakes right there in the morn. It would eliminate the 3M case at night, and the time spent in the morn casing the DPS would be offset by the loss of sorting time in the PM for the 3M.
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I love this quote from the article:
“You only had to pick up the mail and maybe a few parcels before you headed out on your route”
HAHA!! A few parcels?? What about November and December. Will there be “just a few parcels” to work? Hell, Im still averaging 50-60 parcels a day. Seems more than a few!
Its obvious, this author has no clue what actually happens on a daily basis for a carrier.
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These machines cost about $876,000,000 each.They need to expand buildings or build new ones so they fit.At the bulk mail center in Jersey city,NJ. they had to move the military mail to the L&dc In karney.They hired clerks and other personal to work the mail. ( they had excess clerks in other places they could have used.)(Now the USPS is trying to cut.)Three or four years later they still don’t have a FSS working there.From what i have read they don’t work too well.If it wasn’t for the waste,mismanagement and stealing the Post Office would not be in the mess it’s in now.
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When we first got DPS at our office our Postmaster let us case it in or do whatever we needed to do to make it work, our office was no. 1 in the District and the only office showing an improvement with DPS. Well when our Postmaster went to a meeting to be congratulated on why our office was no. 1 and why DPS was working out so well he explained he let us case it up or do whatever to make it work, needless to say his superiors were upset and told him we were not allowed to touch the DPS and we went from the top to the bottom, one of the worst, thanks for the overtime.
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