Last week, the blue mail box Ron Hahs of Northwestern Mutual in Cape Girardeau uses to send business mail displayed a daily pickup time of 5 p.m. On Monday, when the time had changed to 1:30 p.m., he called the post office.

Hahs was told by a Postal Service employee the new pickup time was the latest in the region and even mail dropped at the Richard G. Wilson Mail Processing and Distribution Facility would go out no later than 1:30 p.m.

But according to Cape Girardeau postmaster Michael R. Darling, collection times have not changed -- yet.

Mike Shivelbine drops a stack of letters into the mailbox outside Cape Girardeau's main post office on North Frederick Street on Wednesday. (Laura Simon)

An upcoming change in collection times is part of ongoing money-saving efforts by the Postal Service. Mail volume has decreased over time with the rise of the use of digital communication. That, added to a 2006 law requiring the Postal Service to pay about $5.5 billion a year into future retiree health benefits, something no other federal agency does, has caused the service to cut costs by reducing the size of its career workforce by about 200,000 and consolidating more than 200 mail-processing locations, officials have said.

Mail that is processed by the Richard G. Wilson Mail Processing and Distribution Facility is moving to a plant in St. Louis. Local mail will be collected earlier to allow time for the four-hour round trip.

Darling said, as of Wednesday, collection times are scheduled to change July 27. The latest regional collection time for stamped letters and large envelopes will be at 2:30 p.m. at the processing plant.

"Every other box in the city will be collected prior to that," Darling said.

Collection times for guaranteed mail products, such as overnight and express mail, will stay as they are now, Darling said. In Cape Girardeau, that time is 5 p.m. at the retail service counter at 320 N. Frederick St. Presorted mail and packages are not yet affected by the changes, but may be at some point. Darling said it's difficult to pinpoint dates of operations changes, since the Postal Service continually revises its strategies.

Postal Service policy is to give a 30-day notice of operations changes, said Richard Watkins, Postal Service regional spokesman.

About half the blue boxes in the city were labeled with the new times on Monday, Darling said. In retrospect, notices should have been placed along with them, he said.

"Within a couple days, we will have the 30-day notices out there," Darling said. "There will be a date on those notices when we will commence with the new times."

Watkins said changes to other collection times at boxes and at rural post offices served by the processing facility are not yet available.

After the changes take effect, customers who have regular, stamped mail picked up at their homes should bring it into the post office or a contracted postal unit by the latest posted time to ensure it is processed and delivered locally within one business day, Watkins said.

Greg Davidson, president of American Postal Workers Union Local 4088, works at the processing plant.

He said tests conducted by postal employees during the last few months consistently suggest that, despite collection times changing to accommodate travel time to St. Louis, current service standards -- guidelines that require mail sent from ZIP codes beginning with 637, 638 and 639 to be received within that area within one day -- are unlikely to be maintained. Mail already is sent for processing to St. Louis on Saturday and employees are finding that some pieces are taking two to four days to be delivered, he said, and some of those pieces of mail are delivered without postmarks.

Watkins said "data gathered in those types of 'tests' are anecdotal and unreliable."

Hahs said insurance documents he handles have to go through a preparation and approval process and can't be prepared early enough to go out with the regular mail, at the proposed new time. He requested his call to the post office be considered a formal complaint.

"There's a lot of business that just can't get done by 1:30 in the afternoon," Hahs said. "Worst case scenario, we have to realize we have to add an extra day."

Businesses that handle time-sensitive materials can contact the Postal Service and consult with marketing and retail specialists, who will work with customers to try to meet their mailing needs, Darling said.

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., has questioned Postal Service savings strategies, such as reducing delivery to five days per week, a plan that was scrapped last month. In a letter to the U.S. Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe in January, McCaskill cited a market survey commissioned by the Postal Service and presented to the Postal Regulatory Commission last March that said service changes would ultimately result in a greater loss in revenue than would be saved. The Postal Service has since said the research was flawed.

McCaskill spokesman Drew Pusateri on Wednesday said "Claire and her staff will begin looking into" the restructuring of collection times.

salderman@semissourian.com

388-3646

Pertinent address:

475 Kell Farm Drive, Cape Girardeau, Mo.

320 N. Frederick Street, Cape Girardeau, Mo.