Post Office goes high tech

I first started at the Bemidji (Minn.) Pioneer as an intern in the summer of 1996. That would begin six years as a news reporter, sports reporter and copy editor for a small, six-day-per-week daily newspaper in northern Minnesota. I wrote a large range of stories from multiple beats, to features to sports, my favorite being the coverage of the Red Lake Reservation High School basketball team named the Warriors. Here is a collection of my stories from my time at the Pioneer.

March 4, 1997

By Devlyn Brooks

Staff Writer

Technology that only a few years ago was believed a step in putting the Bemidji Post Office out of business is actually adding to the number of hours worked and increasing mail efficiency, says Bemidji Postmaster Dallas Radel.

The Customer Service Bar Code Sorter is an automated machine that sorts mail by using a computer. The Bemidji Post Office has been using two of the machines since October, and according to Radel, the amount of local "automatable mail" is increasing monthly. "Automatable mail" is considered any mail that can be fed through the CSBCS.

The machine is relatively new postal technology that uses a computer to scan bar codes placed on mail, and then sorts it into 16 available slots. According to Radel, the Bemidji office has 16 different software programs that allow it to sort mail into general categories, such as mail going to different cities, or specific categories, such as sorting mail into the order of how it is delivered -- or "delivery point sequence" -- for each specific Bemidji route.

The machine, when running in peak condition sorting all automatable mail, can sort up to 39,000 pieces of mail per hour, Radel said. But the standard the U.S. Postal Service is striving for is about 25,000 pieces of mail an hour.

The traditional model of sorting mail requires human labor to sort each piece of mail individually. On the low end, carriers are required to sort 18 pieces of mail a minute, for a total of about 1,100 pieces an hour.

Presently, the CSBCS is being used to sort almost 50 percent of the mail that enters the Bemidji Post Office. Most of that automatable mail, Radel said, comes from entities that do large mass mailings, such as phone companies and electric companies. The other half of the mail that cannot be fed through the machine is either too large or does not have a bar code on it.

The companies applying the bard code to their mail are required to purchase computer software to do the task, but the incentive offered by the Postal Service is a lowered postal rate. According to Radel, to mail 6,000 pieces of mail the traditional way costs $1,028, but mailing 6,000 pieces of automatable mail would only cost $817.

In an arrangement between the carriers and the Postal Service, the machine has to maintain an accuracy rate of at least 98 percent, Radel said, or the postal carriers can demand to sort the mail by hand. However, he said the automated sorter has been running close to 99 percent accuracy, and he sees no reason why the accuracy should not improve with time.

Ironically, about five years ago, postal workers at the Bemidji office had feared being replaced by just such technology as the CSBCS. There had been a proposal circulating in higher echelons of the U.S. Postal Service to eliminate mail processing centers, such as Bemidji. Bemidji's and the surrounding area's mail would then have been shipped to Duluth, which had a much larger, earlier version of the automated sorter. The mail would have been shipped back in delivery point sequence from there.

However, Postal Service District Manager Robert Fisher promised the workers smaller automated sorters were being developed which could be used in offices such as Bemidji. This technology saved small facilities such as Bemidji's office, Radel said.

As for now, there is no threat of the CSBCS replacing human labor at the Bemidji office, he said, and in fact, the amount of hours worked has risen more than 6 percent. But the added, he cannot predict what changes will be mandated by the Postal Service in the future.