Alabama congressman wants new facility in Huntsville

Alabama’s largest city needs its own postal processing and distribution facility following complaints of delays and lost packages, U.S. Rep. Dale Strong, R-Huntsville, wrote in a letter to Postmaster General Loius DeJoy.

“Throughout the 118th Congress, USPS casework has been the most demanding for my constituent services department due to the substantial volume of residents voicing their experiences with the shortcomings of the once-trusted USPS system,” Strong wrote in the letter of May 23. .

“Through my involvement in hundreds of these cases, it has become apparent that a major cause of these inefficiencies stems from overworking P&DF in Birmingham, Alabama.”

The letter, reported by FOX54, noted that Huntsville had a distribution center until 2011 before its operations were consolidated with Birmingham.

“Birmingham P&DF does not have the capacity to efficiently process and deliver mail in the state of Alabama,” the letter said.

The congressman noted that since the 2010 census, the Huntsville area has seen “unprecedented growth.”

According to US Census Bureau estimates, the city grew from 180,000 to 226,000 people between 2010 and 2023.

“Currently all mail from Huntsville is sent to Birmingham for processing,” Dale wrote. “The majority of postal service issues reported to my office involve the advisability of processing priority mail and parcels in Birmingham P&DF.”

People have told Dale’s office that there are times when delays are so severe that the Birmingham processing facility recruits outside help and reroutes mail to other distribution centers, the representative wrote in the letter.

“Post office staff at various locations in my district have advised constituents that these delays are solely due to lost or blocked mail in Birmingham as the facility does not have the operational capacity to process the current volume of mail,” Dale said.