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45 Degrees North: Sending Holiday Cheer [1]

['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder']

Date: 2023-11-24

This time of year, many rural homes become part of the global network of Santa’s helpers. There’s a whole lot of baking going on, plus knitting, quilting, making of candy, toys, soaps, fishing lures, tulle tutus and corn hole boards. A surprising number of your neighbors moonlight as purchasing agents on behalf of North Pole Intl. We don’t talk about how some products are magically transported into Santa’s sleigh for Christmas Eve delivery via chimney. For other items, the jolly old elf outsources to the same carriers that rural homes rely on year round for package shipping and delivery.

With the high volume of packages moving about this time of year, non-magical shippers are at a distinct disadvantage. And those of us trying to get things to distant loved ones can get a little Grinchy about the whole process. So here are some tips for making holiday shipping less stressful when you live out yonder.

In your neighborhood. Walk-in pack-and-ship stores may be thick on the ground in urban areas, but the two-hour round trip to one from where I live makes their convenience mostly theoretical. Thank goodness for the U.S. Postal Service and its “universal service obligation” to serve all customers in the United States. USPS has about 69,600 rural carriers and 61,500 part-time rural carriers who serve 44.7 million rural delivery points. Your rural mail carrier operates a “Post Office on wheels” and can sell stamps, accept Priority Mail packages, and more. And while hours may be limited at your local rural Post Office, when the counter is open you’re less likely to wait in a long line than people in an urban area. The USPS has a handy step-by-step guide on how to ship domestic packages here.

Invest in a printer and a scale. This advice is for people who’ve never had to print out an airline boarding pass: An inexpensive wireless printer that connects to your phone via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi is a good investment if you’ll be shipping a number of packages. You’ll also need a postal scale to determine the weight of your package. With those tools, you can purchase shipping labels online using USPS Click-N-Ship and get commercial shipping rates on all domestic package labels.

Packaging supplies. There may be a hoarder-level collection of used shipping boxes and bubble wrap in my basement. But for holiday gifts, we mostly send groups of gifts to a single address where distant loved ones will gather. For those, I generally ship via USPS Priority Mail in flat-rate boxes. The free boxes come in several sizes, and in some options and quantities not available in-person at my local post office. I order them online and my rural mail carrier delivers them to my porch. Pick up a roll of packing tape and you’re good to go.

Know your deadlines. December 16: Put that date in your digital calendar, with notifications set for a week before, the day before, and the day of. That’s 2023’s suggested ship-by date for USPS Ground Advantage in the Lower 48 States. (Alaska, Hawaii, military and overseas addresses have different deadlines.) For USPS Priority Mail in the Lower 48, it’s December 18. If you can afford to delay shipping until December 20, the deadline for USPS Priority Mail Express, you don’t need advice from the likes of me.

Work backwards. Because money does not grow on trees here at 45 degrees north, most years our gifting choices take into account the cost and manner of shipping. We broke the bank the year we shipped copper pipe lawn games my husband made. And it was worth every penny to ship a huge box of his favorite homemade cookies for my late father to share with others in his assisted living facility. But generally, the cost to package and mail is included in the budget that determines what items we might make or purchase. Pro Tip: If free shipping applies to items purchased online and they can be shipped directly to the addresses of your loved ones, you can save some money. But don’t assume that’s necessarily the case. And if you do ship direct, be sure to change the Ship To addresses back before your next order.

Pick-up protocol. USPS Click-N-Ship gives you the option of ordering pick-up the next day. It’s a great convenience for frail elders, parents with young kids, and others. But the high volume of packages this time of year probably fills your rural mail carrier’s vehicle, leaving limited room for pick-ups – especially early in the route. Neither rain nor snow nor sleet will make it easier to shift your pick-up to get to their next 20 deliveries. So if it’s an option for you to drop off those packages yourself at the post office, do it. You’ll be making room for your mail carrier to pick up packages for those who really need that service, and have a chance to spread some holiday cheer as you visit with a few neighbors.

Consider a drop box. The time-honored system of leaving packages on the porch or in an unlocked vehicle still works in my neighborhood. But private package drop boxes and lockers are becoming more popular in rural areas as well as urban ones. Some are only intended to help secure packages received from porch pirates. Others may also be used for pick-ups by providing carriers with a code or key.

On the receiving end. Most of the year, we can count on shipping notifications to alert us about incoming package deliveries. But during the holidays you might not know that USPS, UPS, FedEx and others are carrying packages addressed to you. So keep your porch and sidewalk shoveled and leave a light on for the conventional delivery drivers helping Santa deliver to your door.

Sleigh alternatives. Don’t be surprised if your usual delivery driver arrives in a different vehicle: Our UPS driver usually is assigned a rental truck with greater capacity for at least part of the holiday season. But even if the vehicle is unfamiliar, the driver and their uniform should be.

Scams. ‘Tis the season for email and text scams: “You have a package that can’t be delivered until you pay something.” Don’t click that link! The US Postal Service does not charge fees for redelivery. Learn more about “smishing”, email scams and other frauds here.

Help your elders. Older neighbors and family members who still want to send holiday cheer may be overwhelmed by the logistics. Instead of bath salts or socks, consider buying them prepaid flat-rate boxes. You can order them online to be shipped to your loved one with their return address already printed on them. Or offer to help with wrapping and packaging gifts and printing Click-N-Ship, a ride to the post office, or to drop off packages.

Choices. Finally, it’s important to remember that even when it feels like rural areas have limited choices we still do have choices. My husband and I had a vendor that switched to a small regional delivery service – which might be fine for people in less rural areas. The day the new service’s driver left a box out at the road leaning against our mailbox post after making no attempt to deliver to any door at our commercial address, we called our vendor. They could no longer give us the option of delivery via USPS or UPS, even if we were willing to pay more for shipping. I was polite to the customer service rep (don’t want to get on Santa’s naughty list). But we no longer order from that company.

One final tip, thanks to a sheep producer from whom I have purchased raw wool fleeces. They use a vacuum to remove air from the plastic bags that hold a fleece. That lets them use a smaller shipping box, which helps reduce the cost of shipping materials and transportation.

This Santa’s helper is busily knitting handspun local wool into gifts that need to be shipped by yikes! December 16 or 18. When I start to package those, I’ll be getting out the vacuum cleaner to fit more into less space.

Come to think of it, I wonder if that’s how Santa fits so much in his sleigh?

Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.

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