Web shoppers have post offices hustling to handle increase in volume
By Wayne Specht and Scott Schonauer, Stars and Stripes
Wayne Specht / Stars and Stripes
Postal clerk Airman Ivonne Guerrido-Rivera handles incoming parcels at the Misawa Air
Base, Japan, postal service center. |
Misawa’s Robert Gutierrez says he orders something through the
Internet about once a month.
“It’s great for buying things I can’t get over here,
like certain kinds of clothing, shoes and sporting equipment,” said the 35th
Transportation Squadron staff sergeant.
With the advent of the Internet, ordering items not found in
exchanges has become a blessing for servicemembers and civilians stationed overseas.
The popularity of Internet shopping has caused the spike postal
officials have seen in the volume of parcels arriving at some overseas military post
offices in the Pacific and in Europe.
And that is the case at Misawa Air Base in northern Honshu.
“Postal workers noticed an increase in mail from Internet
purchases about a year and a half ago,” Master Sgt. James Emery, Misawa’s
postmaster said. “Workers currently see a lot of boxes from Internet kitchen supply
companies and book retailers.”
While exact figures of how much tonnage arrives here annually is not
available, Emery said he has enough people to handle the influx.
“It’s not putting a strain on us at this time,” he
said. “We have adequate manning to meet the demand.”
In Europe, Navy postal officers are surveying personnel and their
families to find out if a surge in mail to bases and ships is because more people are
ordering stuff from the Internet.
The Chief of Naval Operations office ordered postal officers to
determine the reason for a Navy-wide increase, and post offices in Europe began
circulating the survey earlier this month.
Emery said there are no plans to survey Misawa’s postal patrons,
however.
Despite a 30 percent drop in the number of U.S. military personnel
stationed overseas, the Navy has seen a spike in mail over the past several years.
From fiscal year 1999 to 2000, the weight of airmail shipped by the
Atlantic Fleet increased 50 percent. Surface mail jumped by almost 37 percent.
Petty Officer 1st Class Hector Rivera, a post office finance officer
in Rota, Spain, estimates that the volume of mail has increased 25 percent in the three
years he has been in Spain.
The post office serves the more than 6,000 active-duty and civilian
personnel and their families stationed in Rota in addition to the thousands of sailors
deployed to ships in the Mediterranean Sea. He also suspects the jump can be attributed to
Web shopping.
“If you have a computer and you live overseas, you’ll be
ordering from the Internet,” he said.
If a small batch of complete surveys from Rota is any indication,
Navy bases might want to get some help.
Most people who completed the form marked that they order two to four
items every month from the Internet and have them sent to their base address, said Petty
Officer 2nd Class Karen Black, a postal clerk.
Many servicemembers also said they order more now from the Internet
than they did from mail order catalogs. Even those who do not order from the Internet
indicated they plan to do so in the future.
Petty Officer 1st Class Bob Woodside, a flight engineer with the
Rota-based Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron Two, said he orders DVD movies off the Web
almost every month. He shops on the Internet because some things you can’t find
overseas, he said.
“And it’s just cost-effective,” said Woodside.
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