Look inside the overhauled Tri-Cities postal sorting center. Will it speed up deliveries?
The U.S. Post Office in Pasco is among the first in the nation to get a high tech update through the 10-year Delivering for America plan.
It’s an update that officials hope will speed up Tri-Cities deliveries.
A postal service official said the Tri-Cities has the highest package delivery rate in Washington state, apparently a nod to a local passion for online shopping.
Nationwide, the $40 billion, 10-year plan includes converting 400 post offices into sorting and delivery centers. A post office in Athens, Georgia, was first.
Pasco is in the initial group of 31.
The local post office at 3500 W. Court St. was selected because its 100,000 square feet can accommodate the modern sorting equipment needed to process tens of thousands of packages each day.
Continuing upgrades
The Pasco conversion started in March 2023 and was mostly complete by June.
The parking lot was repaved over the holidays and is still getting new charging stations as the postal service converts much, though not all of its fleet, to electric vehicles.
Pasco hosts about 200 vehicles. It will retain some gasoline-fueled vehicles for routes that aren’t suited for electric ones, like a 102-mile circuit that covers Eltopia and north Franklin County.
The modernization updated every bit of equipment in Pasco and will improve package delivery speeds and reduce misdeliveries by automating the sorting process.
Now called the Pasco Sorting and Delivery Center, the facility serves more than 100,000 addresses in seven Tri-Cities zip codes, including Burbank, Kennewick, Pasco, Richland and West Richland.
Nearly 300 employees are based out of the Pasco facility after the postal service consolidated operations in West Richland to Pasco. The West Richland Post Office continues to serve the public and the building is also used as a training center for drivers.
Ina Beutler, manager of post office operations, and Steve Cole, acting Pasco Postmaster, led a media tour this week to offer a view of what happens in the expansive work zone behind the post office’s mailbox lobby and customer counter.
Virtually everything, from paint to equipment, is new, Beutler said.
It even has a friendlier color scheme: Post Office blue.
The space was originally painted yellow and orange in a misguided effort to provide a happier work environment for the employees who work at night.
It was not, Beutler joked, a happy color.
The expansive sorting center is divided into zones based on the delivery address. Kennewick is color coded orange, a nod to the Kennewick Lions. Pasco is purple, for the Pasco Bulldogs, and Richland/West Richland is green, for the Richland Bombers.
The facility receives incoming packages through the postal service, namely the Spokane sorting center, as well as a steady stream of drop-offs by Amazon and other firms.
Thousands of packages were being processed during the media tour. A substantial number, if not a majority, had the Amazon swoosh logo on them.
Kim Frum, strategic communications specialist for the postal service, explained that the U.S. Postal service contracts with the online retailer to provide last-mile deliveries in markets where it does not have such facilities.
Amazon doesn’t have a delivery station in the Tri-Cities — yet.
This month, it is breaking ground on a station on North Capitol Avenue in Pasco, north of the King City truck stop. The delivery station will open in tandem with one of the large distribution warehouses near Sacajawea State Park this summer.
It is not clear if Amazon’s investment in an 87,750-square-foot delivery station will affect the volume of packages that move through the postal service. The postal service said it could not comment on the individual contract.
In Pasco, two automated package scanners and sorting lines are at the heart of the operation.
Packages arriving at the station and are placed in bins at the head of the system.
A pair of workers place packages on a conveyor belt that carries it to scanner. The scanner reads the destination code and assigns the package to the delivery bin associated with the address. The sorted packages are loaded onto the 200-plus vehicles assigned to Pasco and dispatched to customers.
The current system can handle 3,000 packages an hour. Upgrades will boost that to 4,000.
All Tri-Cities mail is still routed through the Spokane processing center.
While the modernization is designed to speed up and improve deliveries, officials acknowledge routine delivery complaints in the Tri-Cities about missed deliveries and late arrivals.
Customers are advised to speak with their local postmaster. And, they note, the postal service is always working to hire and retain employees.
Go to usps.com/careers for job postings.
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