Hickory, NC – Hickory’s newest Post Office facility will celebrate its Grand Opening on Monday, August 2, 2010, 10 am – 12 noon at Ace Hardware Contract Postal Unit (CPU), 2310 North Center Street, Hickory. The special ribbon-cutting ceremony will take place at 10:15 am with top postal, community and civic leaders present.

The new Ace Hardware CPU offers virtually all postal services, and is now open six days a week – Monday – Friday, 8 am – 5 pm and Saturdays 8 am – 12 pm. It is one of 15 CPUs in the Statesville/Foothills Area, all serving as convenient alternatives to traditional Post Offices.

“This office will help to increase convenience and access to postal services for customers unable to travel to the other Hickory postal facilities,” said Jim Frizzell, Hickory Postmaster, who will oversee the Ace Hardware CPU. “A full line of postal products and services are available at the new CPU including postage stamps, Express Mail® service, Priority Mail® service, special services, packaging products, and much more. We are very excited for the residents of Hickory and the community at large.”

The Postal Service has re-engineered the entire Contract Unit Postal program to better answer the needs of postal customers nationwide. “The Postal Service is continuously tasked with finding smarter and more efficient ways to reach our customers,” said Frizzell. “Our CPUs, our online services at www.usps.com, and our face value stamps at major retailers (Food Lion, Harris Teeter, CVS, etc) throughout the city and state are allowing us to change the way we do business, to make us available to more people 24 hours a day.”

The CPU can be reached at 828-322-3492. A list of other CPUs throughout the Statesville-Hickory and surrounding areas is listed below.

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A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no direct support from taxpayers. With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 28th in the 2009 Fortune 500.