USPS distribution center in Flushing
breaks record during holiday season
BY GABRIELE HOLTERMANN
For the United States Postal
Service, the “most wonderful
time of the year” is always
the busiest time of the year.
QNS got a behind-the-scenes
tour of the USPS processing
and distribution center in
Flushing, one of New York’s
largest sorting facilities.
Amy Gibbs, Strategic Communications
Specialist for
USPS, shared that on Dec. 7
and Dec. 14, the distribution
center broke postal records
— processing over 1 million
packages in one day.
Four hundred seasonal
hires support the existing 700
full-time employees at the distribution
center throughout
the holidays to ensure timely
delivery. Gibbs explained that
some become full-time employees
and that USPS hired a
total 40,000 seasonal workers
nationwide.
She continued that as part
of Post Master General Louis
DeJoy’s 10-year plan, “Delivering
for America,” the USPS
added 112 new packing sorting
machines, leased 13 million
square feet of additional
space, and made changes
about how to convert precareer
employees into career
employees.
“We learned from our mistakes
last year, developed a
plan and we’ve been implementing
it,” Gibbs said. “And
so far, it’s been going a lot
smoother this year.”
During the tour, Steven
Grant, the USPS Flushing distribution
center’s acting plant
manager, explained that the
plant, which operates 24/7,
does not handle letters or
flats, solely parcels.
“Parcels are the newest
frontier of the Post Office,”
Grant said. “It used to be letters
and flats. I worked on it
all. But it changed to parcel
processing, which is so much
TIMESLEDGER | Q 2 NS.COM | JAN. 7 - JAN. 13, 2022
more exciting, so much more
mail.”
Gibbs remarked that due
to the increase in e-commerce
during the COVID-19 pandemic
— a trend that was already
happening before the pandemic
hit the U.S. in March of
2020.
“It started to feel like the
holiday season in April, and
the trend has continued,”
Gibbs said.
One of the sorting machines
at the Queens facility
is the HTTPS —the largest
machine in the facility.
Peter Lemza, distribution
operations manager, explained
that the HTTPS cost
$44,000,000 and was only one
of two in operation nationwide.
The second one is at a
USPS distribution center in
Denver, Colorado.
The parcels are dumped
onto a conveyor belt on the
first floor, which proceeds to
the facility’s second floor. The
packages, national and international,
are scanned by mail
processing clerks at one of the
14 scanning stations. From
there, the packages continue
on a different conveyer belt
and drop into one of the 600
bins, which are organized by
ZIP code.
One of the eight Daifuku
smart carts, an automatic
guided card, loads the bins
and unloads them onto a dock.
From there, a lift takes the
bins back down to the main
floor to dispatch.
Pamela Monroe, who has
been with USPS for 16 years,
is the HTTPS supervisor.
She shared that she worked
at the SPSS machine before
but volunteered to work on
the HTTPS four years ago because
she wanted to take on a
new challenge.
She explained that it requires
22 clerks and eight
male handlers to run the
machine on the second floor.
Most of the clerks are responsible
for scanning the packages,
while the mail handlers
dispatch the boxes once they
are filled up.
Pointing to a computerized
board, she said, “This is a feed
system. You have to watch
this board because sometimes
they have blockages when the
mail is coming into the system.
So if you don’t pay attention,
you won’t get any mail,
and then everybody’s like, ‘We
don’t have any mail.'”
Pecoli Franklin, who goes
by the name of Pepsi, has been
a USPS mail handler at the
Queens facility for 27 years.
She said that the volume of
mail has increased and is getting
busier, but she and her
colleagues were working hard
to make sure that the mail
reached its final destination.
“I want my mail to get
delivered to me. And I want
other people’s mail to be delivered
to them,” Pepsi said. ”
I treat the mail like it is mine.
It’s a good feeling because
people receive their mail, especially
this time of the year.
I love it. I love it!”
The USPS distribution facility in Flushing processed over 1 million packages on Dec. 7 and Dec. 14,
2021. Photos by Gabriele Holtermann
An employee hard at work at the USPS distribution facility in Flushing.
BAYSIDE TIMES (USPS#025088) is published weekly by Queens CNG LLC, 45-17 Marathon Parkway, Little Neck, N.Y. 11362, (718) 229-0300. The entire contents of this publication are copyright 2022. All rights reserved. The
newspaper will not be liable for errors appearing in any advertising beyond the cost of the space occupied by the error. Periodicals postage paid at Flushing, N.Y. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to the Bayside Times C/O
Queens CNG LLC. 45-17 Marathon Parkway, Little Neck, N.Y. 11362.
/NS.COM
