Macon’s mail processing center showed significant issues with delayed mail, extra mail trips and more in an audit recently released by the U.S. Postal Service.
The audit, released earlier this month, found issues with delayed mail, late, cancelled, and extra outbound trips, scan compliance and safety and security issues at the Macon Local Processing Center.
Delayed mail
Auditors wrote that they found about 20,895 delayed letters at the Macon processing center, as well as four trays of potentially delayed mail that weren’t labeled.
The audit says the reason for delayed mail is because it arrived late to the Macon facility after delivery operations had already begun. There were also issues with letters being labeled with the wrong arrival and delivery dates.
While sorting, employees removed date placards and mixed letters with different expected delivery dates into one outgoing bin, adding a brand new delivery date.
Issues also came from the Atlanta Regional Processing and Distribution Center, according to the USPS audit. The Atlanta facility erroneously sent a mixture of packages and letters to the Macon facility, but the Macon facility is only able to process letters and flat packages.
This caused further delays as the issue was not properly communicated, the audit says.
Late, canceled and extra outbound trips
From the beginning of October 2023 to the end of September 2024, there were thousands of late and cancelled trips by the Macon Local Processing Center. Including extra outbound trips, these made up 46% of all trips taken.
The audit found the delayed trips were caused by issues with truck parking, route start times and dock congestion issues.
Late trips are attributed to the lack of on-site parking. The facility uses three separate off-site parking lots to store trucks overnight, and schedules do not account for drivers clocking in at the processing center, traveling to their truck, then traveling back to the processing center to collect the mail. This also causes congestion at the loading docks, making delays worse.
Management at the LPC says they are working on acquiring a new parking lot to accommodate all vehicles.
Most cancelled trips and extra trips were caused by network changes to postal routes that took place in February 2024. The number of cancelled trips has declined since then, the audit found.
Scan compliance
USPS policy says employees are supposed to scan mail containers when they are loaded and unloaded from trailers in order to keep track of the mail as it moves through the USPS system. Macon’s facility had issues with this, the audit shows: From October 2023 through September 2024, the Postal Service’s average monthly scan rate goal of 93.25% was only met once in October 2023 for load scans. The load scan rate for this time period reached a low of 73.92% and the low for unload scan rates reached 69.17%.
According to plant management, this is because employees were more focused on clearing the loads than monitoring the completion of scans, the audit says. There were also misunderstandings about who was responsible for scanning the mail containers.
The drop in scan rates causes problems with inaccurate utilization data, mail being sent to the wrong destination and inefficient operations, the audit says.
Safety and security
The Postal Service also found safety and security issues in the audit. The Macon facility inconsistently used chocks under truck and trailer wheels while parked at loading docks. Chocks are placed under wheels to prevent them from rolling, and not using them can increase the chances of injuries or accidents. Management didn’t know employees weren’t using them.
This story was originally written for the Macon Telegraph on February. 27, 2025.
