Friday, December 26, 2003
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Friday, December 26, 2003 |
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Mail facility serves large area By JOHN MUNFORD It’s four o’clock in the morning. Do you know where your Christmas cards are? Chances are the cards in your mailbox today were parceled out at the U.S. Postal Service sorting facility on Ga. Highway 54 in between Fayetteville and Peachtree City. It serves Fairburn, Palmetto, Union City and Senoia in addition to locales in Fayette County. The facility contains three mammoth machines that sort envelopes at a blazing speed based on the bar code printed on the envelope under the address. After each envelope is scanned by the computer, it is carried quickly along a conveyor belt system that shoots it to the appropriate level of bins. Letters are sent to specific bins so they may first be sorted by carrier. Then each carrier’s letters are sorted a second time so they may be placed in the order in which they will be delivered. Envelopes which contain small items cannot be processed by the machines and must therefore be processed by hand. After workers arrive at 1:30 a.m., the goal is to get all the mail sorted by 8 a.m., said Sonya Calaway, a supervisor at the sorting facility. Sometimes, one of the three sorting machines breaks down and a mechanic works on getting it back up and running. A breakdown can significantly slow down the process, however, Calaway said. On Monday, Dec. 15, the postal service’s busiest day, the sorting facility machines processed 290,000 pieces of mail for delivery.
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