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Mail, packages linger

Rachel Brand, Rocky Mountain News

Published December 29, 2006 at midnight

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Its trucks were stuck in the muck at least 150 times this past week, and it's still not over for the U.S. Postal Service.

Mail carriers were on "full alert" Thursday with storm No. 2 possibly dropping up to 2 feet of snow in the metro area.

But the Postal Service, FedEx and United Parcel Service - still not caught up from last week's snowstorm - had no plans to close down, at least not Thursday.

But for Friday, with the governor declaring a state of emergency, all bets were off.

"We are at full force," Postal Service spokesman Al DeSarro said Thursday. "We are going to make a big push to get as much mail planned for delivery over the next couple of days delivered today."

The post office has been grappling with a six-day backlog of mail.

The only things that would stop mail carriers are "major blizzardlike conditions; terrible visibility; if it's very, very unsafe; if the governor declares a state of emergency," DeSarro said.

Publicly traded UPS is keeping on 1,600 temporary workers it would normally have sent home to help its 5,000-person Colorado staff.

Thursday, a manager was delivering packages in his own four-wheel- drive truck.

"As of today, we're about 400,000 packages behind," UPS spokesman Jeff Keener said Thursday. "Which is essentially one day."

Likewise, postal service employees are on 12-hour shifts, and 700 holiday workers remain on the payroll.

DeSarro said slogging through snow and driving on slush add at least a third to a half as much time to a mail carrier's route.

He asked Denver residents to shovel their walkways and help plow their streets so carriers can get through.400,000

By the number

Packages the United Parcel Service is behind after last week's blizzard.