Dorothy and Andrew Yankanich moved into their $18,000 brick rambler in Wheaton, Md., in 1966 and soon began what would become a daily ritual: Walking across the street to the squat blue mailbox and dropping off bills, birthday cards, letters, catalog orders and whatever else needed to be sent on its way. For 43 years, in rain and shine, through the raising of seven children, the friendly box they could see through their front window’s lace curtains was always there.
Until, one day at lunchtime last month, it wasn’t. Andrew Yankanich, 82, watched as postal workers hacked at the rusted bolts and hauled the box away for good.
Across the country, stalwart blue “collection boxes” like the one the Yankaniches used are disappearing. In the past 20 years, 200,000 mailboxes have vanished from city streets, rural routes and suburban neighborhoods — more than the 175,000 that remain.
“It was a nice-looking box,” said Dorothy Yankanich, 77, looking out on the empty concrete slab across the street. “That was my exercise. Going across the street with the mail every day.”
Although some communities have mounted protests — angry customers in one Maine town planted a snowplow and backhoe in front of a threatened mailbox — the vanishing boxes are only the most visible sign that something fundamental is changing in the way Americans communicate. The boxes are disappearing because most of us no longer use the mail as we used to.
The U.S. Postal Service says it removes “underperforming” mailboxes — those that collect fewer than 25 pieces of mail a day — after a weeklong “density test.” Snail mail is a dying enterprise because Americans increasingly pay bills online, send Evites for parties and text or give a quick call on a cell phone rather than write a letter.
In the Chicago area, 500 collection boxes were removed in 2007. The number of blue boxes has held steady since then, at about 3,500.
Local letter mail volume, however, has decreased 13 percent in the past year, by about 24 million pieces (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
“Volume has gone down, but we haven’t removed boxes and don’t plan to any time soon,” Postal Service spokesman Mark Reynolds said. “A lot of study went into that box removal. We haven’t had to reinvestigate our box placement since then.”
Combine the impact of new technologies with the gut punch of the recession, and in the past year alone, the Postal Service has seen the single largest drop in mail volume in its 234-year history, greater even than the decline from 1929 to 1933 during the Great Depression. That downward trend is only accelerating. The Postal Service projects a decline of about 10 billion pieces of mail in each of the next two years, going from a high of 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to 170 billion projected for 2010.
The situation is so dire that the Government Accountability Office last week added the Postal Service to its list of high-risk federal agencies in need of change. Already the Postal Service has cut hours at hundreds of post offices across the country. It has consolidated routes, dropping 158 delivery routes locally, offered workers early retirement and imposed hiring and salary freezes. Still, said Postmaster General John E. Potter, the service is in “acute financial crisis.”
The Chicago postal district implemented summer hours at 54 stations and branches last month. Most of the stations open later and close earlier. The reduced hours will remain in effect through Sept. 25. That move came on the heels of Chicago ending overnight window service at its downtown post office last month. The facility was the last 24-hour post office in the country.
“We’re like air,” said Postal Service spokeswoman Deborah Yackley. “People just take it for granted that we’re always going to be there. Well, if you want to keep your collection box, would you mail a letter, please!”
It’s not just first-class mail that is migrating to the Web. Junk mail — the bank offers and ads that often make up most of the day’s mail — has fallen precipitously as businesses follow consumers online. “If you go to banks, they will tell you point-blank that their first priority is to get the hell out of the mail,” said Gene Del Polito, president of the Association for Postal Commerce, a trade organization that represents commercial mailers. “These people already see where the change is going.”
The Postal Service is valiantly trying to keep up with the times. Customers can buy stamps at grocery stores or online; the system’s Web site lets users print mailing labels and order boxes that the Postal Service will pick up at your door and ship for one price, regardless of weight. “We want people to say, ‘Hey, I can turn my home into a post office,'” said Robert Bernstock, president of mailing and shipping services at the Postal Service. “We need to evolve because the way people are communicating has evolved.”
These days, children may get birthday cards from Grandma, but they rarely send them. If there’s any thrill left in the mail, it tends to come from things we order, like movies from Netflix, magazines and stuff we buy online. Internet commerce, once expected to save the post office’s future, is an important part of the system’s revenue but comes nowhere near making up for dollars lost from the sheer decline in mail volume.
The mail at most front doors now holds few magical surprises like letters with an international stamp or scented declarations of love, said Nancy Pope, a curator at the Smithsonian’s National Postal Museum. “Mail is just not as deeply emotional anymore,” she said. “We don’t have the ‘Oh my God, the mail’s here!’ moments anymore.”
When Rebecca Brodie, 25, a Fairfax County, Va., teacher, mails invitations to her wedding, instead of including a response card with an envelope and stamp, she will ask guests to RSVP by e-mail.
“We kind of got a little flak for it from the invitation person,” Brodie said. But with lots of international family and grandparents who regularly e-mail, she and her fiance decided to save on postage. “Maybe only five out of the 300 people we’re inviting don’t use the Internet.”
Andrew Yankanich’s letter carrier told him he can leave his bills in his personal mailbox next to his front door and flip up the little red flag. So it’s no hardship that they’ve taken away the blue mailbox across the street. It’s just, he says, something he’ll miss.
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See related story, “Report: Postal service must deliver on change,” News section, Page 4
