Herb Ridings, Hermiston Post Office lead clerk, sells some stamps to a customer on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. Hermiston is one of several Eastern Oregon post offices facing delivery issues because of staffing.

LA GRANDE — To La Grande Post Office Postmaster Kelly Carreiro, mail delivery staffing shortages are nothing new.

Carreiro, who’s worked for the local post office for 24 years and was promoted to postmaster in 2012, said it “isn’t uncommon” for either the La Grande, Baker City or Pendleton offices to be short-staffed, and that, resource- and time-dependent, occasionally mail carriers are borrowed from other offices for assistance.

“Baker’s shortages do affect La Grande, not so much as far as non-deliveries, it affects it in the fact that we may be later than normal because we send anybody that’s available … to work in those neighboring offices,” he said.

The Baker City Post Office has been significantly short of employees for several weeks, the Baker City Herald reported, causing mail delivery to be delayed later then normal.

However, help is on the way. A July 27 job fair in Baker City yielded 14 applicants now in the hiring process, said Kim Frum, a strategic communications specialist for the agency. The event was one of 37 Postal Service fairs across Oregon that day organized to alleviate worker shortages in the state and nationwide.

Although Carreiro said that he and his workers rarely struggle with successfully delivering to around 9,000 addresses, their office is short-staffed as well.

“We run about as lean as you can be, and that’s not by choice,” he said.

A career first

Carreiro said that mail and Amazon parcels are run 363 days a year, making it tough to give any staff member substantial time off.

Monday, July 24, marked the first time in his 24 years at the La Grande Post Office that packages were delivered late due to a staffing shortage. A mail carrier called in sick that day. As a result, 302 western rural route addresses did not receive mail or packages.

Carreiro and his staff members worked a 12-hour shift and were able to deliver everything the very next day.

This year, he posted about 15 city carrier position and rural carrier associate position openings each, and was able to hire two people. He hopes to bring on two to three more staff members for both types of positions in the near future.

“It’s been several months since we’ve borrowed anybody because we know everybody is equally as short,” Carreiro said. “I used to be a regular city carrier in this office, so when we get super short, I don’t have a problem with getting my satchel out and going out and delivering mail. … Sometimes that’s what’s necessary, what’s needed to get the job done.”

Around the region

La Grande isn’t the only shorthanded Eastern Oregon post office.

Tamara Walchly, supervisor of customer service for the Hermiston Post Office, was also dealing with staffing challenges, causing slower delivery.

“We have to break up our routes, which means we have to pivot, meaning a carrier will not only have to deliver his route, but they also have to deliver a piece of another route, which means that the mail gets delivered later in the day in other areas of town,” she said. “On days where we have a carrier call out, that is the only way we can do it.”

Walchly said Hermiston is also short of vehicles for carriers, forcing them to use their own.

“There are routes that the carrier provides their own vehicle in rural areas, and then there are routes that don’t where we have vehicles provided for those carriers,” she said. “We are down a vehicle, so then the carrier has to use their own vehicle and usually they don’t want to use their own vehicle. The postmaster or myself, we have to use our own.”

Walchly isn’t sure when the situation will improve.

“Unfortunately, our vehicles come from Portland and we’ve asked for a replacement vehicle and we are waiting on that,” she said. “We have a vehicle up in the Tri-Cities because it’s a Mercedes Metris and it’s getting fixed, and we’re waiting on it to be fixed. When they get to it they get to it is what they say.”

Post offices in Enterprise and Pendleton are also shorthanded, officials confirmed.

“The postal service is not immune from the current staffing and hiring challenges encountered by nearly every industry, and that includes both our city and rural offices such as Enterprise,” said Kim Frum, a U.S. Postal Service spokesperson based in Seattle. “The good news is there are no mail delays. The office has skilled management in place overseeing the day to day operations, using every available resource at their disposal to meet the challenges and that includes staff possibly working overtime to meet those obligations.”

According to Frum, the Enterprise Post Office serves roughly 1,600 customers and needs at least two additional carriers to round out their staff.

“It’s hard to compare staffing in many of the offices in Eastern Oregon because it is such a rural area,” she said. “As such, not all offices are full-time post offices like with multiple employees like Enterprise. Some are part-time post offices, which means they offer part-time window service hours to conduct retail transactions, are usually staffed by one or two postal service employees and may not have carriers. Instead, the part-time post offices have post office boxes for their customers to collect their mail.”

Not everyone facing shortages

There are currently no staffing shortages or delay issues in Grant County, although services are somewhat limited due to its rural character, according to Frum.

“Only two communities in the county have street delivery,” she said. “The first is John Day, the county’s most populous community, with 1,664 residents. The second is Prairie City (842). However, Prairie City’s street delivery is done using contractors and not postal employees.”

Frum said Grant County currently has two letter carriers in John Day and one contractor serving Prairie City. Residents elsewhere in the county receive mail in a post office box or, in some cases, a cluster box unit.