Huntsville, Alabama (WHNT) – The U.S. Postal Service is rolling out a new service that promises to help small businesses get their products to their customers faster and cheaper.
This service is called USPS Connect. It is part of the Postal Service’s 10-year delivery plan for America, a draft to improve performance and promote self-sustaining service.
The service consists of three branches: national, regional and local. In Alabama, USPS Connect Local is enabled at 49 post offices throughout the state.
“This will allow the post office to become an important member of the community once again,” said USPS MPOO Arthur Bowens.
The way it works is for business owners to register to participate. Second, there are many guarantees from the USPS for packages shipped to addresses within the zip codes of participating post offices.
When a company signs up at usps.com and creates a free business account, they get access to:
Guaranteed same-day delivery if you drop off your package at the post office between 5:00am and 7:00am
- Guaranteed next day delivery for all other local deliveries
- Sunday delivery (some areas)
- Free package pickup from store
- Special rates based on package size
- Included shipping supplies (optional)
- Visibility Tracking
“This enables same-day and next-day local delivery at a low cost. It’s affordable,” says Bowens. “This allows small businesses to compete with some of the larger companies and make big drops with us.”
Jonathan Fowler is the owner and designer of Huntsville-based Fow Wow Designs. The business creates one-of-a-kind apparel, from shirts and hats to mugs and stickers.
“We do many unique and quirky local designs for the Huntsville and Alabama areas,” Fowler said.
Fow Wow ships anywhere, but 80% of orders stay in the Huntsville area. They almost all use USPS, so when Fowler learned of this new USPS service, he was thrilled.
“It’s a small business in general, but it’s a struggle trying to get the cost down, especially on shipping. Compared to Amazon, it ruins one order. They have millions of orders.” If they mess up one, it’s kind of lost, but one of our orders means a lot to us.
Trustworthiness is a “must have” for customers to come back.
“There are so many other places people can go to, so I want to make sure there is minimal or, if possible, no problem when shipping something.
He said that at some points during the pandemic, especially during the holidays, he and his family were constantly working to ship on time. But he said he appreciates an understanding customer base.
“A big shoutout to the community and everyone who supports our quirky brand.”
Now he is optimistic, those days are past.
“It all goes back to trying to be trustworthy,” says Fowler. “make [deliveries] Take it easy and carry it on your back. It would really help us out. ”
Participating offices in the Tennessee Valley are:
- Athens Post Office, 1110 W Market St, Athens, AL 35611
- Florence Post Office, 210 N Seminary St, Florence, AL 35630
- Harvest Post Office, 9157 Wall Triana Hwy, Harvest, AL 35749
- Haysland Post Office, 8401 Whitesburg Dr. SE, Huntsville, AL 35802
- West Post Office, 3605 Governors Dr. SW, Huntsville, AL 35805
- Wynn Drive Post Office, 645 Wynn Dr. NW, Huntsville, AL 35816
- Madison Post Office, 56 Hughes Rd, Madison, AL 35758
- Owens Cross Road Post Office, 8396 Hwy 431 S, Owens Cross Road, AL 35763
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