Mail Master Aims to Keep Holidays Merry

In a small room in downtown Washington, Mike Krop runs the command center that tries to guarantee that 4.5 billion holiday packages, cards and letters will get to their destinations on time.

At his disposal, Krop has 97 airplanes, scads of trucks and trains, computers that track the weather and a heavy load of responsibility. But he demurs at any suggestion that he is the secret Santa behind the arrival of millions of gifts.

“More of a supportive elf,” says Krop, burly and jovial.

At the Postal Service command center, managers sit at half a dozen computers to track airline movements, follow the development of bad weather and watch loads of mail moving from place to place.

Mail moves on about 15,000 commercial airline flights daily, Krop said, and it’s necessary to track them to keep local managers advised of how much is arriving and when.

“The issue at Christmas is capacity,” he said. Commercial airlines are fuller because of holiday travelers, and those passengers carry more luggage. That means less room for the mail, forcing postal managers to send their own planes or shift to trucks or trains.

In addition, this is the time of year when businesses make much of their income by direct-mail sales, a surge of buying that also can glut the mails.

The biggest surprise, Krop says, is the change in mail volume from day to day. “We’ll go from 5 million pounds in one day by air mail to 12 to 13 million pounds” the next.

Another problem is volume--actual square footage of mail. “We wind up flying a lot more teddy bears and popcorn . . . things that Christmas lends itself to,” he said. But they take up much more space, for the weight, than other mail.

“As that change occurs, no matter how hard I plan, my volumes exceed my capacity,” he said. “I don’t know if you are going to buy a teddy bear or a bracelet. Right now you may not know either,” but when you make the choice he still has to get it delivered.

Krop refers to 30 of the aircraft under contract to the post office as “dial-a-planes,” available at a phone call to fly in and pick up a load of mail that needs to travel quickly. And they work a lot.

One may be dispatched from Hartford, Conn., for example, to pick up mail from New York and carry it to Los Angeles, a route that averages 50,000 to 60,000 pounds of mail a day.

Or, if a storm shuts down airports in one city, flights may be diverted. Then Krop’s staff scrambles for other flights or trucks.

Traditionally, the Monday before Christmas is the busiest day of the postal year--though having Christmas on a Wednesday this year may shift that to this week.

To prepare, the command center began operating 24 hours a day Friday and will continue that schedule through Dec. 24.

Krop managed the Christmas center last year too, and brought it into operation in January when a blizzard crippled much of the nation and postal inspectors had to ferry him and other managers to work in four-wheel-drive vehicles.

Command center worker Mitch Oliver remembers a case in last year’s storm when a Tennessee company called to say it had 10,000 packages to mail. The post office had to send in a special plane, but it got the items moving.

“When the weather becomes adverse, that’s when things begin happening here,” Oliver said.