Postmaster Proposes Mobile Vans for Neighborhoods

Postmaster General Preston Tisch said Monday that he wants to field a fleet of mobile postal vans that would dispense stamps and services to neighborhoods, after the fashion of the familiar ice cream truck.

Tisch’s written remarks were released in Washington in advance of a speech in Minneapolis, where about 1,400 business mailers from the postal service’s 13-state Midwest region are attending a three-day forum to learn the latest technology and display their own products. He said that the mobile post office concept is just one of several ways in which he plans to make customer service the top priority of the postal service.

“My goal is to do whatever is needed to establish the postal service as the leading service enterprise in America,” he said.

In the post office of the near future, customers will be able to check the status of express mail packages by a computer tracking system and type addresses onto a computer screen that will print out their nine-digit ZIP codes.

Tisch said making the service convenient for people to use is vital.

“Some of the things we are going to do to make it more convenient for them to do business with us include making stamps available by mail, deploying mobile postal vans into the neighborhoods where people live and work and setting up around-the-clock dial-up telephone systems we call postal answer lines,” he said.

Tisch said that he has already taken steps to strengthen the marketing of postal services to major business clients.