Post office limits hours

For many people, stopping by the post office is a ritual, the continual errand.

Soon, those trips may be a little more difficult as post offices across the country move to cut their hours. The reason: the US Postal Service is feeling the same economic pain as the rest of us. In fact, their fuel bill is up $1 billion over last year.

As a result, David Walton with the US Postal Service, says the company lost “a billion dollars” last quarter.

So, to make up the difference, you’ll be seeing signs on the door of your local post office detailing new, more limited store hours.

These new hours will affect almost every post office, but in a different ways. For instance at the Cloverdale post office they are actually closing an hour earlier. Some locations may open a little later or may close for lunch. It depends how the customers at that post office use it.

“We’ve had instances where in the first hour that some offices are open, they have only gotten two customers. So, it’s really no feasible for us to be open during that time if all we’re going to get is two customers,” Walton said.

Most customers we talked with understand the changes.

“Just like anything else, we’ll have to make it work I guess because of economic issues,” said Sarah King.

Robin Sells said, “I’ll just have to change my hours as well.”

And if the new times don’t work, here are a couple more options. First, there are now Automated Postal Service Stations. You can do almost everything there. There are three of these stations in the Roanoke Valley.

You can also buy stamps and mail packages from your home. For more information on this, go to usps.com.