The Bloomfield post office is now in high gear

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — At the main branch of the Bloomfield post office on Bloomfield Avenue during an especially cold morning last week, a Bing Crosby Christmas song is playing on the PA system of the warehouse in the rear of the building. The bay doors are open and delivery trucks, parked outside, are getting filled with mail. A wall of frigid air is well into the building, too. But carts of mail clatter and everybody is either moving or stopping to inspect an address. No one looks cold. Package deliveries started earlier, at 6 a.m. They will end at about 6 p.m. Ordinarily, there are six parcel post routes in the township. But holiday demand has increased that to 10 routes.

As one might expect, the Bloomfield post office is at its busiest during the year-end holiday season. There has been a 14-percent increase in holiday season mail over last year, according to Matthew Mancuso, a supervisor at the main branch.
Much of the increase comes from the U.S. Postal Service providing what Mancuso says is “last mile” accommodations for Amazon, Fedex and UPS. In return, the postal service receives airmail support from UPS and ground deliveries by Fedex.

“Certain areas of Bloomfield get more parcel post deliveries than other areas,” Mancuso said. “The Brookdale area gets heavy delivery.”

He said there are 37 delivery routes in Bloomfield and during the holiday season 22,000 deliveries a day to Bloomfield homes and businesses, six days a week. The post office also has Sunday deliveries for Amazon and will pick up parcels for anyone who does not want to go to the post office.

The holiday crush for the post office starts during a four-day period, Mancuso said. “Black Friday,” the day following Thanksgiving, is the first day, and “Cyber Monday,” the first Monday after Thanksgiving, is the fourth day. Cyber Monday is so named to emphasize online purchases.

But with all the added packages passing into Bloomfield, Mancuso said none have looked suspicious this holiday season.

“We had pigeons two weeks ago,” he said. “They were going to Puerto Rico.”
In the summertime, honeybee deliveries are common.

“A rooster came into us,” he said. “It was probably a fighting rooster. But honeybees come in more frequently, and crickets, to pet shops.”
But bees are for summer. Holidays are for candy.

Mancuso said there were two big holiday shippers in Bloomfield. They are Holstein’s, on Broad Street, and JJJ Candy, on Harrison Street. Holstein’s is a big shipper every holiday.

“They shipped over 400 packages of chocolates yesterday,” he said.
Another reason for the increase in mail handling, according to Mancuso, is that Bloomfield is getting more residents from its development projects. But Bloomfield College, he said, does not generally do much mailing.

Customer complaints are usually about a package that has not arrived yet. The post office will do the detective work. But according to George Flood, a public information officer for the postal system, the post office gets its share of compliments, too.

“A carrier saved someone’s life in Berkeley Heights,” he said. “Carriers are the eyes and ears of the town.”
Flood did not elaborate but said that the Berkeley Heights rescue was not this year.

Perhaps something of a surprise, he said the number of letters children brought to the main Bloomfield office that were addressed to Santa Claus was only about a dozen so far this Christmas season. And the ones dropped into mail boxes are not counted by the Bloomfield office at all.

But according to the U.S. Postal Service, the busiest mailing day of the year nationwide happened this past Monday, Dec. 19, when 611 million pieces of mail were anticipated to be processed. Most post office deliveries are anticipated for today, Thursday, Dec. 22. So we may say with some confidence that yes, Santa Claus, there still is a Virginia.