Residents in cities across Minnesota are experiencing significant delays in mail delivery, sometimes going as long as two weeks without receiving any mail, according to members of Minnesota’s congressional delegation.
Rep. Angie Craig and Sen. Amy Klobuchar said they raised concerns about reports of mail delays in Rochester and Lakeville earlier last year, but the issue has spread to other cities in the time since.
“Recently, I have received reports of significant mail delivery issues from residents across Minnesota, particularly in the Duluth and Minneapolis-St. Paul areas. Residents have reported that they have not received mail deliveries for as long as two weeks, and when deliveries do arrive they are often incomplete,” Klobuchar said in a letter sent to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over the weekend.
The delays, Klobuchar wrote, mean residents are not receiving “federal checks, business mail, medications, and paychecks that they rely on for their health and livelihoods.”
Craig said the problem “no longer seems to be isolated to neighborhoods or even individual cities, but [is] rather a larger issue across Minnesota.”
“My constituents have reported to me that they regularly go three to four days without receiving their mail; some have told me they haven’t received mail since December 16, 2022 — now 2 weeks ago. I’ve been told by local postal officials that a route would never go unserved for more than one day at a time, but it’s clear that is simply not the case,” she wrote.
USPS has blamed staffing shortages and increased holiday shipping volumes for the delays, according to Craig.
Paul Larsen, a Brainerd resident, told Alpha News he often receives mail just once a week and went a 15-day period without receiving any mail in December.
“We still have approximately two dozen pieces yet to arrive,” said Larsen, who tracks his mail with the USPS app.
He said this has been an issue for months, ever since his mail carrier retired.
“I went to the Baxter annex and the hampers and mail trays were full and I could see they were swamped and understaffed,” he said.
“There’s something going on,” he added. “I don’t fault the line workers. It’s the people up the line who don’t really care.”
Larsen said the problem needs to be taken seriously because many people, like his neighbor, receive their prescriptions in the mail or wait for paper copies of their bills to arrive so they can pay with a check.
“I’d just like mail every few days, but there’s no communication,” he said. “What’s the plan?”
USPS said it will be responding to Craig and Klobuchar directly. It did not provide any additional comment.
Anthony Gockowski
Anthony Gockowski is Editor-in-Chief of Alpha News. He previously worked as an editor for The Minnesota Sun and Campus Reform, and wrote for the Daily Caller.
