Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
EFFICIENCY'S THE WORD: The Christmas season represents the biggest challenge of the year for the Ann Arbor Post Office, and this is the biggest Christmas mailing season yet. But methods evolved through long years of experience enable the huge mail-handling chore to proceed smoothly and efficiently. The complex mail-sorting process, for instance, stars right at the very beginning -- when the mailer turns in his cards, letters and packages. Instead of dropping them into slots, he hands them to a girl in the Post Office lobby,. She sorts them into three classes -- city mail, state mail and out-of-state mail.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
PACKAGES, PACKAGES: Mailing of Christmas gift packages steps up enormously the volume of parcel post mail. Here's an accumulation of parcels in the "rural room" in the basement of the N. Main St. Post Office.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
MORE SORTERS AT WORK: Normally, the Post Office has 15 of these sorting boxes in operation, but for the Christmas season the number has been increased to 34. Many of the part-time workers are vacationing students, and some of them are working a 150hour shift, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 a.m.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
READY TO GO OUT: To help handle the bulky package mail, the Post Office is using the basement of an office building at N. Main and Depot St. for some of its parcel post operations. Here is a batch ready for shipment.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
CARRIERS NEED STRONG BACKS: Mail carriers' sacks are bulging these days. Here, a postman looks over his prospective load for the day, probably reflecting that he's going to be more than a little weary when his rounds are completed.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
CHRISTMAS SPIRIT SHOWS: This closeup of sacks of parcel post mail plainly shows its nature, as gay Chrismas wrappings are visible through the sack openings. On a big day during the Yuletide season, the Post Office will process as many as 1,000 such bags of parcel post, not to mention more than 200,000 letters.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
THE KEY TO THE SYSTEM: These labelled sorting boxes are the key to the problem of Christmas mail handling. In this one, there are cubicles for Canadian points and all other foreign countries. Similar boxes have spaces for mail bound to every Michigan postal station, no matter how small, and to principal cities all over the nation. Such detailed sorting at the start eliminates time-consuming operations at terminal points and speeds the flow of mail all along the line.

Published In:
Ann Arbor News, December 19, 1955
Caption:
SORTING IS BIG JOB: With Christmas greeting cards flooding the Post Office, sorting of letter mail is a round-the-clock process for postal employees. These two women are part of the sorting crew. The local Post Office has added about 130 temporary employees for the Christmas rush, augmenting the normal force of approximately 200.