Federal officials are seeking public input from Rio Grande Valley locals about a proposal to make major changes at the McAllen Post Office — changes that would cede a large chunk of distribution oversight and operations to San Antonio.
The plan calls for transforming the Valley’s largest mail center from a hub for the four-county area, into a “local processing center” (LDC) that would instead operate under the umbrella of the San Antonio Processing and Distribution Center (P&DC).
It’s all a part of U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s 10-year, $40 billion “Delivering for America” plan to overhaul the nation’s mail network.
DeJoy hopes to “modernize” the postal network by consolidating various facilities and revamping distribution routes.
“The current footprint of where facilities are located is too widely dispersed, especially around the country’s major metropolitan areas,” according to a July 2022 issue of The Eagle, a quarterly magazine that the USPS produces to report on the Delivering for America plan.
“An inefficient patchwork of half a dozen facilities or more — where a single, well-located option could better serve the area — can be found around many of the country’s cities, requiring extra transportation and unneeded operations that drain resources, limit capacity and degrade organizational performance,” the magazine further reads.
The McAllen post office is currently designated as a processing and delivery center.
Before a letter makes its way onto a delivery truck at a post office in Edinburg, Pharr, San Juan, or elsewhere in the Upper Valley, it first lands in the vast processing and sorting room at McAllen.
But DeJoy’s plan would transfer much of that regional sorting 240 miles to the north, reducing McAllen to a “local processing center” that would serve as a “critical node” to mail distribution, according to a USPS news release issued on Monday.
“(T)he business case supports transferring some mail processing operations to the San Antonio P&DC …” the news release further states.
But the change would also mean that local mail would travel farther before getting here.
“This would mean a significant percentage of the mail collected locally will travel across the wider USPS transportation and processing network over significant distances to reach their final destinations in a more efficient manner,” the news release further states.
While the USPS continues to study and gather input on the proposal, officials say no local jobs will be lost.
“The evaluation is a first step in the Postal Service review and investment process in this facility and will not result in this facility’s closure or career employee layoffs,” the news release states.
However, a critical component of the Delivering for America plan calls for reducing spending by finding and exploiting operational efficiencies.
The industry’s own magazine details how that will be accomplished by phasing out smaller postal facilities in favor of consolidating operations at a smaller number or “million-square-foot-plus” super centers.
“Where a metropolitan area might today be served by 80 small delivery units, in the future these carrier operations would be served by four or five new, larger purpose-built facilities,” the July 2022 Eagle reads.
The hope is that the consolidated distribution centers would cut down on the number of trucks departing for deliveries with less than full loads.
“At the local level, there are far too many empty trucks connecting delivery units to plants and back again. Simply put, fewer trips will mean lower cost and better service …” The Eagle reads.
Valley residents will have a chance to comment on the consolidation proposal during a public meeting on March 26.
The meeting will be held at the McAllen Main Library, 4001 N. 23rd St. starting at 4:30 p.m.
The public may also submit written comments at https://www.surveymonkey.com/mpfr-mcallen-tx.
