PORTLAND -- The U.S. Postal Service plans to close four distribution centers around the state, and all Oregon mail will be sorted in Portland.
If you live in Bend or Eugene and send a letter to someone across the street, very soon that letter will likely travel to Portland and back before it gets there.
The long-time standard of delivering first-class mail in one to three days is being changed. Soon it will take two to three days.
There's 150 of us and I don't know how Portland is going to do it all, said Jim Thomas, who works at the distribution center in Eugene.
USPS plans to close distribution centers in Salem, Eugene, Bend and Pendleton. The centers on NW Hoyt Street and at Portland International Airport will sort through every piece of mail in Oregon and Southwest Washington.
In order to have a viable and sustainable Postal Service, we really need to consolidate because we have way more capacity than we have mail to process, said Ron Anderson with the U.S. Postal Service.
Mail volumes have dropped more than 25 percent nationally over the past five years and USPShas been losing several billion dollars a year.
In Oregon an estimated 160 postal workers will either lose their jobs or be relocated.
The changes won't happen until after May 15. Stopping the changes would take an act of Congress.
