HOLIDAY MAIL ON THE MOVE

The number of Christmas cards handled at the Cape Girardeau Mail Processing Center is up this month, but the overall volume of mail won't increase much, said Cape Girardeau Postmaster Mike Keefe.

He said business mail decreases during December, although the number of Christmas cards being sent more than makes up the difference.

"We're handling about two million pieces of mail a week," Keefe said as he surveyed the red and green envelopes scattered in bins at the processing center.

"Normally, Mondays are a big day for Christmas cards. People have the weekend to address them and then they mail them on Monday," he said.

It takes the post office longer to process Christmas cards than business mail because the address on most cards is handwritten and can't be sorted by machine.

While most people think the postal service handles its largest volume of mail during the Christmas season, Keefe said more mail is sent in January and February.

That's the time of year more people stay home and tend to order more materials by mail, he said.

The automated center, which opened three weeks ago, is able to process twice the amount of mail per week as the old Cape Girardeau Post Office did, thanks to new equipment. The center processes most of the mail for Southeast Missouri.

Keefe said the center is only the first phase of automation. The postal service's goal is to have total automation by 1995.

Much of the processing formerly was done by hand, Keefe said. Some mail, like registered letters, always will need to be hand-processed, he said.

A new piece of equipment called an Optical Character Sorter can sort 26,000 to 30,000 pieces of mail per hour. Keefe said the machine and others have helped the postal system "adapt to the future.

"It all comes down to, `What do you want mail to cost,'" he said. "Eighty-six percent of our costs are labor costs.

"The more automated we are, the easier it is to keep costs down, and if mailers cooperate, we can keep costs what they are today."

The postal service doesn't require mailers to type addresses, use nine-digit zip codes or white envelopes. But if such measure are taken, processing is less expensive because machines can do most of the sorting.

A "read rate" is the percentage of letters that can be read by machine. During most times of the year, the read rate of all mail is about 50 percent, Keefe said. But during the Christmas season, the rate drops to about 30 percent.

Keefe said many businesses have complied with automation standards by using typewritten addresses, all capital letters, no punctuation and nine-digit zip codes. All of the measures help keep costs down, he said.

Keefe said the automation will lead to fewer postal employees in the future. Nationally, the postal service employs about 730,000 people.

Keefe said trends indicate that employees will be hired only when another quits or retires. But, he stressed, no employees will lose their jobs as a result of automation.

An open house at the processing center, located at the Cape West business park, is planned for the spring.