Brave Little State is Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism podcast. Every episode begins with a question submitted by our audience. Today, a question from Craig Gill about a beloved institution:
“Why is there such a problem with the U.S. Postal Service in Vermont? (urgent question)”
The Postal Service has been essential for free speech and the circulation of ideas since before the founding of the United States. These days, it's becoming increasingly important during elections, as more people vote by mail. And it’s still a vital part of many communities. But changes at the national level over the past half century are coming to a head here in Vermont.
Brave Little State’s Burgess Brown travels around the state to witness these challenges firsthand, and he traces the history to figure out how we got here.
Note: Our show is made for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript. Transcripts are generated using a combination of robots and human transcribers, and they may contain errors.
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Postal dreams
Burgess Brown: I’m very happy to be a journalist. But, I have to tell you that I sometimes think about another path. A fantasy career, of sorts. It’s my “country mailman” dream. In it, I drive a beat up Forester full of mail in a small town somewhere. I know my neighbors. I know their dogs. I watch their kids grow up. How romantic.
Ryan Ellis: Don't give up the dream. There's still chance. There's still time. you can still make that happen, I think.
Burgess Brown: This is Ryan Ellis. And he’s lived my dream.
Ryan Ellis: One of the jobs I had right after college is working as a letter carrier. And I loved it. It was everything I had hoped it’d be.
Burgess Brown: But academia came calling. Ryan is now an assistant professor at Northeastern University. His research focuses on what he calls “the politics of infrastructure.” That includes everything from computer networks to the United States Postal Service.
Ryan loved the Postal Service as a kid because he felt like it connected him to a wider world. And he says this was actually a critical function of mail in this country from the very beginning.
Ryan Ellis: It had a commitment to binding the entire nation together.
Burgess Brown: Ryan argues that, even more than the First Amendment, the Postal Service was the foundation of free speech in early America.
The Founding Fathers certainly thought the service was important. Benjamin Franklin was named the first postmaster general in 1775. That’s a year before the nation was founded. And then two decades later, George Washington called for massive expansion of post roads and construction of post offices across the growing country.
Ryan Ellis: It circulated news and information in the early country in a way that was completely out of step with our peers.
Burgess Brown: This was seen as a public service and was funded with taxpayer dollars. The founders made it incredibly cheap to mail newspapers, pamphlets and political magazines at the time. That flow of ideas and information to every corner of the growing nation was critical to the development of democracy.
Ryan Ellis: It wasn't only serving heavily trafficked, dense urban cities. It wasn't only serving commercial hubs. It was serving everybody. And so this idea that rural areas, outlying communities, were also going to be integrated into the post office and by extension, into the nation, was a key foundation.
Mail in Motion: Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Burgess Brown: This is the so-called postman’s creed, a sort of informal USPS motto. And this is what gets me so jazzed about my country mailman dream. People love their postal workers! They’re beacons of democracy! And especially in a place like Vermont, where they’re out there slogging through mud and skidding on ice to get us our mail and, increasingly, helping us vote — in some Vermont towns this year, as many as half of voters cast ballots using the mail-in system.
Post offices themselves are institutions in a lot of Vermont towns. They help neighbors stay connected to neighbors, sometimes just by existing.
Like, in the town of Elmore, in Lamoille County. The Elmore post office is nearly 200 years old. It’s tucked into the center of the Elmore Store. Past the bread aisle, there’s a little window where you can buy stamps and drop letters. The crown jewel is a wall of little, golden post office boxes with little, golden numbers and ornate designs.
One of those boxes belongs to Mary Benford.
Mary Benford: I know it's like snail mail. That's what they say. But I mean, it's a dying art.
Burgess Brown: Mary lives right upstairs, above the store. She moved here a year and a half ago, direct from Philadelphia.
Burgess Brown: But you like it? No regrets?
Mary Benford: I don't like it, I love it. It’s beautiful here.
Burgess Brown: Mary didn’t have a P.O. Box in Philly, but she’s got one at the Elmore Store. And she says bopping downstairs to check her mail has been a great way to meet her new community.
Mary Benford: I mean, we bought a bookcase from a guy that we met getting our mail.
Burgess Brown: And then there’s Ed Olsen, who visits the Elmore post office just about every day.
Ed Olsen: I think it's like the little hub for the town.
Burgess Brown: Today, Ed’s here to grab a newspaper, chat with his neighbors and check his mail.
Ed Olsen: We've been doing this for 40 years, and—
Burgess Brown: You've had a P.O. Box here for 40 years?
Ed Olsen: Yes, and it— we could survive without it. But it'd be, it'd be a lot harder, and it would break down, I think, a little bit of what the, what creates a community here.
Burgess Brown: People in Elmore are particularly appreciative of their post office, in part, because not long ago, they almost lost it.
At the start of 2022, the U.S. Postal Service announced that they would be pulling the little gold P.O. Boxes from the store the following month. They never gave a reason, but the owners suspected it was because the office wasn’t bringing in enough money.
Elmore residents banded together to fight back. There are fewer than 1,000 people in town. But hundreds of them signed petitions and wrote letters to the Postal Service. Even the congressional delegation got on board. Including then-Congressman Peter Welch.
Sen. Peter Welch: We’re gonna have the Postal Service stop delivering here at the Elmore Country Store? That’s not right, and it’s not going to happen! (Cheers)
Burgess Brown: And after all that, the community won. The Postal Service walked back its closure plan and renewed a contract with the Elmore Store.
But the problems facing the Postal Service — the ones that led them to try to close the Elmore post office — they haven't gone away. And in a lot of ways, they’ve gotten worse.
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Josh Crane: Welcome to Brave Little State, Vermont Public’s listener-powered journalism show. Every episode starts with a question that’s been asked by you, our audience.
Today: “Why is there such a problem with the U.S. Postal Service in Vermont?”
It’s a vital institution that so many people love. But changes at the national level over the past half century are coming to a head here in Vermont.
Ben Doyle: Four hundred and forty-nine days we're waiting, and we're not going to take it any longer!
Josh Crane: Brave Little State’s Burgess Brown travels around the state to witness these challenges firsthand.
Jason Clark: I mean, you can look through this: Prime, Prime, Prime, Prime. Those are all Prime.
Josh Crane: And he traces the history to figure out how we got here.
Ryan Ellis: Postal officials, in seriousness, they actually considered burning the mail to sort of restart the system.
Caitlin Hopkins: We need to get it out of our heads that we're a business. Because we're not.
Josh Crane: Brave Little State is a proud member of the NPR Network. Welcome.
Mail explosion
[“Zip Code with The Swingin’ Six” plays]
Burgess Brown: Welcome to the 1960s!
The Swingin’ Six: (Sung) When, hello, my friend. How do you do? We hope you have a moment or two to listen to what we have to say to each and every one of you. It concerns our postal system!
Burgess Brown: This is your new favorite band: The Swingin’ Six! And they’ve just landed the gig of a lifetime – a 1967 post office public service announcement.
There’s trouble in the postal world, and big changes are afoot. Well, here, they’ll tell you all about it:
The Swingin’ Six: (Sung) Well back then, the days of the 13 colonies, cry was freedom and how to defend it. Mailing a letter wasn't much trouble. There weren't too many places to send it. But now it's a different story. They've got more mail than ever before. It's stuffed in bags, stacked on shelves. There's hardly room for anything more. There's been a mail explosion! They’ve got a terrible load.
Burgess Brown: They’re not kidding about a mail explosion. In the decades following World War II, mail volume across the country doubled.
And the Postal Service just couldn’t keep up.
Ryan Ellis: Now, all of a sudden, you have trucks backed up with mail that simply can't be processed.
Burgess Brown: This is Ryan Ellis again, the postal scholar.
Ryan Ellis: Postal officials, in seriousness, they actually considered burning the mail to sort of restart the system. So the system is clogged by this influx of mail in a system that is just like straining under the weight.
Burgess Brown: Something had to give. And a postal strike — the largest walkout ever against the federal government — was the final straw.
Ryan Ellis: And out of this sort of maelstrom comes the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970.
Burgess Brown: The Postal Reorganization Act created the United States Postal Service as we know it today. It made a bunch of different changes, but the key one was this: The Postal Service became an independent agency with a mandate to fund itself. Meaning, no more tax dollars. All postal operations were to be funded through the sale of things like stamps and shipments.
So, the idea here was, theoretically, to give the Postal Service more flexibility so that they could respond to the increased mail volume by innovating and upgrading systems as they saw fit — running it less like an agency and more like a business.
Ryan Ellis: Does it work? Well, some things really do improve, right? They do invest in automation. They do speed up the moving of the mail. They are able to do it with fewer workers, to a degree. Long overdue investments do get made.
Burgess Brown: But, the successes were overshadowed by a sort of existential confusion over what the Postal Service was ultimately supposed to be — a sustainable business or a public service?
Ryan Ellis: This thing, which is neither fish nor fowl, is just hard, right? We don't ask our police force, our fire department, to be revenue neutral, but we ask our Postal Service to do that, and so it has these dual competing obligations to be sort of business-like on the one hand, but also perform its core service functions on the other that are always, always in tension.
Burgess Brown: Neither fish nor fowl. Not quite a business, not quite a public service. There are, of course, more policies and technological advances that have had a big impact on the Postal Service since, like the advent of email, for example, and a 2006 law that required the Postal Service to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health benefits.
But ultimately, this tension — that the Postal Service is expected to perform a public service that’s not profitable, while also running like a business that breaks even — we’re still grappling with that today across the country and right here in Vermont.
State of limbo
Caitlin Hopkins: We need to get it out of our heads that we're a business. Because we're not.
Burgess Brown: This is Caitlin Hopkins. She’s the president of the American Postal Workers Union of Vermont. Caitlin grew up in Pomfret and, like me, had a rosy vision of the Postal Service.
Caitlin Hopkins: My bus stop in Pomfret was the post office. So, when we were waiting for parents, we'd go in and we would say hi to whoever was manning the counter at the time, which for a while it was a guy named Andy, and then it was Rosie. Those were very formative people in terms of forming my perception of the post office, of being, “OK, this is a great place to be. They know everybody.” It always felt like a very positive thing.
Burgess Brown: But then, in 2015, she took a job with the Postal Service. And she says some of her perceptions were shattered.
Caitlin Hopkins: Quickly found out that it's very much a face that is put on for the public and really struggled to adapt because the management style of the post office is very much a case of all the bad is rolling downhill, and when there's more pressure on managers, then there's more pressure on the people below them, and then you start seeing a lot of mental health issues in the post office.
Burgess Brown: We reached out to the regional representative for the USPS to ask about some of these concerns, by the way, and didn’t hear back in time for this story.
Anyway, Caitlin’s been with the Postal Service for nine years and says it’s always been tough. But she can pinpoint a moment when everything got a whole lot worse.
WGN-TV: Postal workers have been key in helping Americans remember life before the pandemic. Mail deliveries have continued as usual. But it’s not clear how much longer they’ll be able to do that.
Burgess Brown: The COVID-19 pandemic led to an increase in online shopping, which created this massive spike in demand for the Postal Service. This was good for revenue, but widespread illness among essential delivery workers meant there weren’t enough staff to handle the spike. Those that were healthy worked long, brutal hours to try to make up for the shortages.
And at the same time, a new postmaster general was putting his stamp (if you’ll allow me) on the service: Louis DeJoy.
DeJoy’s 10-year planLouis DeJoy was appointed postmaster general in 2020, during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term in office. DeJoy has a background in logistics and freight. And in his 10-year plan for the Postal Service, he made it clear that in the tug-of-war between business and service, he was squarely on the side of business.
Cost-cutting was priority No. 1: This meant reducing hours that post offices are open, or outright closing them like they tried to do in Elmore. It meant slowing down delivery times for first-class mail and getting rid of overtime for mail carriers. All while raising prices for certain services.
So, in Vermont, if you’ve been noticing slower delivery times, reduced post office hours and higher prices, this is not a glitch in the system. It’s all part of DeJoy’s 10-year plan
And some critics of this plan see it as part of a larger effort to privatize the Postal Service outright. This is something that President-elect Trump proposed during his first term in office. But the Postal Service is beloved by Americans across the political spectrum — including in rural communities, which are generally the ones most impacted by cost-cutting measures. So Trump’s plan to privatize, which required Congressional approval, was a difficult sell to Democrats and Republicans alike.
Here’s Matt Dickinson, a professor of political science at Middlebury College:
Matt Dickinson: When the chickens come home to roost and they, you know, they get this backlash from rural voters, I think they're going to hesitate to do more than pay lip service here.
Burgess Brown: Matt thinks the idea of privatizing the Postal Service will likely be revisited during President-elect Trump’s second term. But that, ultimately, it’s just too fraught to go anywhere.
Matt Dickinson: You're going to have to pick your battles. I don't think the Trump administration is going to pick this as the hill to die on, privatizing the post office.
Burgess Brown: This means that the Postal Service will likely continue to persist in some sort of limbo state between business and public service. And this limbo state is made even more confusing because the Postal Service actually contracts with private businesses, like Amazon.
The Postal Service has a deal with Amazon to make what are called “last-mile deliveries” — basically, bringing Amazon packages to hard-to-reach rural areas.
Caitlin Hopkins of the American Postal Workers Union says, in Vermont especially, these “last miles” can be the most treacherous for drivers.
Caitlin Hopkins: There's a couple of roads in Springfield, Vermont, that were for a time known as the “death run”, because it gets so icy and so slick, and if you have anything that, you know, isn't made for it, you're really taking your life in your hands.
Amazon pays the USPS to make these deliveries, but the sheer volume since the pandemic has overwhelmed rural carriers and post offices.
Jason Clark: I mean, you can look through this: Prime, Prime, Prime, those are all Prime.
Burgess Brown: Jason Clark is the operator of the Elmore Store and he’s showing me how they’ve reconfigured their space to try to accommodate the growing piles of packages. But there’s only so much that new shelving can do.
Jason Clark: It’s definitely getting more and more and like, larger packages. People get, like tires or, like, small refrigerators, lawn mowers, things like that.
Burgess Brown: You’ve had a lawn mower delivered through the Elmore Store from Amazon?
Jason Clark: Yeah. And big truck tires, um. (Laughter)
Burgess Brown: That’s wild.
Burgess Brown: UPS, a private shipping competitor, also has a similar contract with the Postal Service for last-mile deliveries. And the added burden these contracts create for U.S. postal workers has slowed service across the nation.
And according to Caitlin Hopkins, this higher package volume, combined with cost-cutting measures and a difficult workplace culture, is contributing to what she sees as the main issue with the Postal Service in Vermont – a worker shortage.
Caitlin Hopkins: We're trying to fill in the gaps where we can, because we can no longer hire. So many people across the state have worked for the post office, or they know somebody who's worked for the post office and they had a miserable experience, and they won't recommend it. They can't, in good conscience, recommend it.
Burgess Brown: The numbers back this up. In fiscal year 2022, nearly 60% of all early-career employees left the Postal Service nationwide. And In 2023 a third of all new-hires left within 90 days.
And, to Caitlin’s point, filling these vacant positions has been slow. In Vermont, at the time of writing, there are 93 vacant positions listed on the USPS job portal. And the majority of them are for rural carriers.
Earlier this year, some Waterbury residents stopped getting mail delivered to their houses altogether when the USPS couldn’t fill a vacant rural mail carrier position. And last year, some in Hinesburg went weeks without receiving mail. In Bethel and Randolph, customers struggled to get their medication and their inhalers.
It’s worth noting that you’re only going to hear from a couple of Postal Service employees in this piece. That’s because postal workers are highly discouraged from speaking to the press — and some fear retaliation if they cast the service in a bad light.
Postal woes have been felt from coast to coast in recent years, but nowhere in this state have the Postal Service’s issues been more heated, and more symbolic, than our capital city.
Ben Doyle: You know who hasn't shown up? United States Postal Service leadership.
Burgess Brown: But you know who has shown up? This guy. That’s right after the break.
(sponsor break)
455 days
[crowd noise]
Burgess Brown: It’s a frigid day in January 2024, and people in Montpelier are pissed.
Ben Doyle: A hundred and eighty-two days. That's how long Montpelier has been without a post office!
Burgess Brown: A couple hundred concerned Montpelierites are gathered in front of the Federal Building in downtown Montpelier. It used to house the city’s post office until it flooded in the summer of 2023. Six months later, it’s still sitting there, empty.
Ben Doyle: In the days after the July flood, the residents and friends of Montpelier showed up.
Burgess Brown: Ben Doyle is standing at a microphone on the slushy sidewalk, flanked by members of Vermont’s Congressional delegation. Ben chairs the Montpelier Commission for Recovery and Resilience, created last year to respond to the devastating July flood.
Ben Doyle: Teenagers mucked out basements. Neighbors checked on neighbors. The delegation showed up. The governor showed up. Philanthropy showed up. You showed up. But 182 days later, you know who hasn't shown up? United States Postal Service leadership.
Burgess Brown: Those 182 days were a confusing and often frustrating time for Montpelier residents. For a while, the makeshift postal presence in town consisted of two or three delivery trucks that served as ad hoc P.O. boxes, surrounded by stacks of plastic crates overflowing with mail and packages. They didn’t sell stamps and only accepted pre-paid mail so residents had to drive to Barre or East Montpelier for that. There was no electricity and no A.C. in the summer and then, as temperatures dropped, no heat.
At one point in the autumn, postal workers were burning open fires in a metal tub to keep warm while they handed out mail.
Concerned citizens and the congressional delegation wrote letters to management demanding that Postmaster General DeJoy provide a timeline for a new, permanent post office location. But — nothing. Residents’ patience was wearing thin, like local business owner Kate Whelley McCabe.
Kate Whelley McCabe: We are not asking for a miracle here. What we're asking for is for our federal government to do the most basic of things, and that is to give us a working post office right here in town.
Burgess Brown: Johanna Nichols said the trek to neighboring Barre to use Postal Services there was hurting Montpelier’s seniors.
Johanna Nichols: Have you tried the entrance to the Barre post office? It's pretty tricky.
Burgess Brown: The pressure campaign continued through the winter. And in April, the Postal Service announced they’d signed a lease on a downtown property. They promised a fully functional post office before the start of the summer. But summer came and the summer went, and then the fall. And still, no post office.
In October, the American Postal Workers Union rallied on the Statehouse lawn. And Ben Doyle showed up with some updated figures.
Ben Doyle: Four hundred and forty-nine days we're waiting, and we're not gonna take it any longer!
Burgess Brown: One of the most consistent criticisms I heard during this time was that Montpelier residents didn’t really know where to go to get their mail or what the plan was for the future. They were frustrated by the lack of communication from Postal Service management.
Ben Doyle: Like, yeah, we can write them, or we can call them, and they're not going to get back to us, or they don't really care what we think, or we're howling to the wind.
Burgess Brown: Ben, townspeople, our Congressional delegation, spent 15 months howling into the wind.
And then, in the midst of my reporting for this story, 460 days after the flood and with little fanfare, it finally happened.
A grand opening
Michael Hakey: You've got the scissors, as the postmaster, you can be cutting the ribbon.
Burgess Brown: It’s Saturday, Oct. 12, in downtown Montpelier. And there’s a grand opening happening.
Michael Hakey: First and foremost, welcome everyone to the Montpelier post office. This is certainly an exciting day in Montpelier post office history, and we're so very thankful to so many of you who have worked tirelessly to get this office back open.
Burgess Brown: Michael Hakey, a postal operations manager, is presiding over this celebration. Press people appear to outnumber townspeople — and there are only four press people.
Michael Hakey: I will now cut the ribbon and, which will signify the official grand opening of the Montpelier post office. All right, folks, we're gonna have Postmaster Doug Powell cut the ribbon.
Doug Powell: We're officially open!
Michael Hakey: Excellent. Congratulations. Or, thank you.
Burgess Brown: Did you catch that? “Congratulations. Or, thank you.” That sounds about right. “Congratulations, you got your post office back?” Or, “Thank you for your patience?” It’s hard to know what to make of this day when it took so long to arrive. And then when it finally did, it kind of arrived with a bit of a whimper.
After the ribbon cutting, I watched locals peer into the windows and then kind of timidly walk in to see if, this time, their post office really was open.
And whatever their gripes with the Postal Service, they were glad to see a familiar face behind the counter.
Wendy Gillander: It was great to see you, Ned. All right. I’ll see you soon.
Burgess Brown: Wendy Gillander, a post office clerk in Montpelier.
Wendy Gillander: So, it's been great. I'm really happy to be back and seeing our regular customers again on a more regular basis, I guess I would say.
Burgess Brown: Wendy spent the last 460 days in snow, in rain, in heat — in Montpelier, Barre and Berlin — making sure that Montpelier residents got their mail. Wendy knows her neighbors, and she knows their kids and she knows their dogs. And they all know her, too.
Alice Angney: Yay!
Wendy Gillander: Yay is right!
Alice Angney: Thank you so much. I'm glad you have a home!
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Credits
This episode was reported by Burgess Brown. It was produced and edited by Josh Crane and Sabine Poux. Angela Evancie is Brave Little State’s Executive Producer. Our theme music is by Ty Gibbons; other music by Blue Dot Sessions.
Special thanks to Zoe McDonald, Bob Kinzel, Adiah Gholston, Rachel Hellman, Paul Montague, Trevor Braun, Alexia Murray, Bruce Olsson, Ned Swanberg, Justin Hopkins and Alice Angney.
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Brave Little State is a production of Vermont Public and a proud member of the NPR Network.
