‘Organized chaos’ on the Duluth post office’s busiest day of the year

The Monday before the Monday before Christmas was expected to be the busiest day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service, said Sarah Schultz, customer relations manager in Minneapolis. Schultz had finished a busy morning in Minneapolis, and then she drove up to Duluth to help shepherd local media on a behind-the-scenes tour.

Overall, the postal service expects to deliver nearly 13 billion total pieces of mail and packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. On Monday alone, it expected to welcome 8.5 million customers, from Duluth to LaPointe on Madeline Island, from New York City to Ochopee, Fla, the nation’s smallest post office at 61.3 square feet. The total on a regular day is 5 million.

“It’s organized chaos around here,” Schultz said of what happens at post offices everywhere in the big spaces the customers don’t see. “And in the morning, there’s packages everywhere.”

Yet given that it was the busiest day of the year, things in that vast world beyond the counter were quieter and calmer than one might expect. Many of the 83 people who work under plant manager Scott Manisto were on the job, but each seemed to be methodically going about his or her task in a way that seemed more organized than chaos.

Melissa Kelly, a postal support employee, was sorting boxes from the 13 pallets of Amazon packages that had just arrived, as customers from Grand Rapids to the South Shore to Grand Portage — all in the Duluth service area — were learning via their various tracking devices.

Kelly placed or tossed the boxes — gently, the post office wants you to know — in blue containers for the smaller packages and in larger containers for the larger packages. There’s one of each for every postal route. There are 81 city and four rural routes out of the main Duluth post office, Postmaster Laurie Lundgren said, plus 26 city and 12 rural routes out of the Mount Royal post office.

The Amazon packages would be delivered on Tuesday, Lundgren said, along with Amazon packages coming from two more shipments before the night was over.

Although Monday may have been the busiest day, Christmas wasn’t over for the post office. It won’t be for quite some time.

“We get a little bit of a lull,” Schultz said. “And then the returns start.”

Your deadlines have passed for military priority mail and first-class mail (Dec. 11) and for retail ground mail (Dec. 14).

What’s left:

• Dec. 18 — Military APO/FPO/DPO priority mail express

• Dec. 20 — First-class mail

• Dec. 21 — Priority mail

• Dec. 23 — Priority mail express