Southland Mail Service Gets High Grade in Test

Local mail service in most Southern California areas reached its best performance since records have been kept, the Postal Service said Tuesday, with Los Angeles reporting an 85% on-time delivery of first-class mail. National performance matched its previous record, with an 87% rate.

The sharply improved mail delivery for many areas was the best since the Postal Service hired Price Waterhouse in 1990 to run independent tests, sending letters, postcards and large envelopes through the mail to measure efficiency.

The Postal Service basic standards call for those items to be delivered overnight in a metropolitan area (a range of approximately 60 miles), second-day delivery for distances up to 600 miles, and three days for any location from coast to coast.

The national figure for overnight service was 87% during the period from late May to mid-September, the final quarter of the postal system’s fiscal year. It matched the 87% attained during the prior quarter, and represented a significant jump over the 83% recorded a year earlier.

“Americans demanded improved mail service and we delivered,” Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon Jr. said at the monthly meeting of the Postal Service Board of Governors.

Major investments in automated sorting equipment, and an improved system for scanning and handling poorly typed or handwritten mail, have contributed to the service improvements. Despite the proliferation of faxes and e-mail, regular mail volume expands each year.

Runyon has put a special emphasis on improving overnight service, which had deteriorated badly in New York, Chicago and some other major cities.

Performance records for the Southland’s big mail processing plants included:

* 85% on-time overnight delivery, a record level, for the Los Angeles facility, which covers the Central City and part of the Westside. Last year it was 80% for the same time period.

* 90% on-time, a record, for the Van Nuys plant, which covers the San Fernando Valley, compared to 85% last year.

* 90%, tying the prior record, for Long Beach, which covers the South Bay, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica.

* 90%, a record, for the City of Industry, which covers the San Gabriel Valley, compared to 88%.

* 91%, also a record, for Santa Ana, which covers Orange County, compared to 87%.

San Diego, at 93%, up from 89%, and San Francisco at 90% from 83%, also had new performance highs from the previous year.

Southland volume has increased 3% or 4% during the past year, and efficiency has improved with only a “minuscule” addition of 100 full-time employees during the past year, said David Mazer, the Postal Service manager of corporate relations for Southern California. There are 50,118 workers handling about 12.4 billion pieces of mail annually.

“It’s not a case of throwing people against the job” to improve the on-time delivery, said Mazer. “The automated equipment is finally paying off.”

The frantic rush for the Postal Service comes during the night and early morning hours. The bulk of the mail, about 60%, is collected at the last pickup of the day, at 5 p.m. For mail to reach its destination overnight, it must be sorted at the processing plants and delivered to local post offices by 6 a.m., where individual carriers will “case it”--sort it by the buildings or houses on their route.

The Price Waterhouse testing system measures performance for first-class mail in 96 locations. The best service was in Wichita, Kan., with a 94% on-time result.