SANTA ANA, CA – The current economic environment has impacted just about every business in the country, including a direct affect on mail volume. Due to these changes in the business environment, the Postal Service must adjust its operations to current mail volume in order to maintain the high service performance the American public expects and deserves.

The Postal Service will be adjusting delivery routes in Orange County this month to align them with current workloads. When adjustments are implemented, it is possible that some customers may have a different letter carrier and mail delivery to some addresses could be at a different time of the day.

“These changes to carrier routes will provide stability and consistency, which is what our customers tell us they want,” said Santa Ana District Manager Gerry Ahern. “Service will not be impacted. Most customers will notice no difference in their mail delivery.”

First-Class Mail service is at an all time high, as independently measured by IBM. On-time service remained at 96 percent during the last quarter in the Santa Ana District, which serves all of Orange County and southern Los Angeles County. “Our goal is to maintain excellent service to our customers now and well into the future, as well as to keep mail affordable by managing our costs,” said Ahern.

An unprecedented agreement signed recently with the National Association of Letter Carriers allows the Postal Service to move quickly to modify delivery routes when mail volumes increase or decrease. U.S. Mail volumes historically follow the state of the national economy.

The first phase of route evaluations and adjustments began this month in Los Angeles and Orange Counties. Nationwide, changes are expected on as many as 85,000 routes throughout every district within the Postal Service.

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An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation — 146 million homes and businesses. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.