New lockers at the Dillingham post office could make package pickup a little quicker.
Just in time for the holiday mail rush, the Dillingham post office has a new set of parcel lockers, and an extra hour for folks to buy stamps or send off their own packages.
The new lockers are accessed from a separate entrance on the left side of the post office. There used to be seasonal post office boxes for cannery workers back there, said Postmaster Penny Johnston. When she saw it, she thought it was a perfect spot for parcel lockers.
“They weren’t using it, it was covered with a lot of dust,” Johnston said. “Let’s make use of it, and that’s what I did.”
Dillingham gets between 500 and 1,500 packages every day – and thousands per day during the holiday rush.
“That’s not just little teeny tiny ones,” she said. “There are huge ones.”
Johnston said the new lockers will help get those out faster.
“As long as they unload their parcels daily, we should be able to put 274 out a day, extra,” she said. “They won’t have to come to the front counter, they won’t have to do all that digging around, waiting in line.”
The lockers also hold larger packages than the ones that are inside near regular post office boxes. The postal service’s priority mailers will fit inside them, although the very largest Amazon boxes still will require taking a paper slip to the front counter.
The post office receives packages on several flights each day, and Johnston cautioned that just because a package is scanned as having arrived in town according to a tracker, that doesn’t mean a slip or key will be waiting in a person’s mail box.
“When we get them, we scan them as arrived at unit,” she said. “That’s just telling the customer that we’ve gotten it. It doesn’t tell ‘em it’s ready.”
Johnston said packages are actually ready for pickup when they say delivered or attempted.
The door to the area with the new lockers will be unlocked when the post office is open at the front counter, Johnston said.
“For right now, I have them open while we’re open here in the lobby, until I know that it’s going to work,” she said. “I need to make sure I watch that, ‘cause it doesn’t really have an overhang to protect from slick spots and stuff so I don’t want people walking back there. If we’re here a little longer, we’ll leave it open a little longer. If the lights are on, we’re home.”
Another set of lockers is still on the way, Johnston said.
The post office also has a little more time for Dillingham to pick up a package at the counter or mail out their own. Johnston said she switched some schedules around so that as of late October, the post office is no longer closing for a lunch break.
Those aren’t the only changes at the post office. Johnston said they recently got LED lights, and she’s hoping to re-do the parking lot next year.