It’s been four years since mail-sorting machines were shut down at the U.S. Postal Service facility on East 38th Street.
That move followed years of debate and reversed decisions about whether mail sorting should continue in Erie.
But on June 4, Postal Service officials from Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh were in Erie to showcase millions of dollars worth of investments into new postal vehicles and a reinvented Sorting and Delivery Center.
The new Sorting and Delivery Center represents a substantial upgrade to the 140,000-square-foot facility at 2108 E. 38th St. that’s been used to sort packages in recent years.
New machines help sort packages faster
New equipment, which went online more than a year ago, increases dramatically the speed at which packages can be sorted, while reducing physical strain on the employees who work there, postal officials said.
While regular mail for the Erie region is sorted elsewhere, mostly in Pittsburgh, a growing number of packages are processed in Erie.
USPS upgrades part of nation-wide plan
Updates to the Erie facility are part of a $40 billion nationwide plan dubbed “Delivering for America.” The goal of that 10-year blueprint was to modernize and improve the efficiency of the Postal Service. Of that total, $256 million already has been spent in Pennsylvania.
Erie’s new package-sorting line, which is virtually identical to about 100 others built across the nation, handles an average of 8,000 parcels a day, serving 148,000 customers on 113 carrier routes. Another 150,000 customers are served by the Erie facility through its function as a transfer facility.
Improvements to Sorting and Delivery Centers across the county are part of a nationwide effort to ensure the future of the Postal Service.
Eddie Masangcay, a district manager for the Postal Service in Pennsylvania, talked about what those investments signify.
“It’s more than an investment. It’s a pledge,” he said. “We are not just upgrading. We are transforming.”
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New mail trucks have offer cameras, air conditioning and cupholders
Patrick Ecker, director of fleet strategy and support for the United States Postal Service, shows off one of the new next-generation delivery vehicles that have been deployed in Erie. New vehicles are replacing some built as long ago as 1987.
Postal officials showed off another investment outside the facility, where Grumman Long Life Vehicles — known among postal workers as LLVs — are still in use after more than 30 years in service.
Not far away sat two of the vehicles meant to replace the stub-nosed delivery vehicles.
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Patrick Ecker, director of fleet strategy and support for the Postal Service, said a pair of new vehicle designs, some of them electric, are larger and more fuel efficient and are built with expansive windows, clearance for carriers to stand up inside and cameras that offer views in all directions.
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Models deployed to Erie will often feature all-wheel drive, he said.
They also come with a couple of features — common in most personal cars but missing in the LLVs that have been the workhorse of the nation’s postal carriers.
Ecker said the new vehicles, known as Next Generation Delivery Vehicles were designed in cooperation with postal carriers and their unions.
As a group, carriers didn’t ask for self-driving vehicles or even advanced GPS systems.
What they wanted, Ecker said, were cupholders and air conditioning.
The new vehicles offer both.
Contact Jim Martin at jmartin@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: USPS has new mail trucks, sorting equipment in Erie