New Postal Processing Plant

During our robust years, when our city was growing larger and there was tons of mail coming in every day, we outgrew our old Processing Facility in San Diego. Located near the airport, a couple miles from downtown, the building was packed with machines, mail and people. There was no doubt that we needed new digs, and for a time we all thought the property across the street was going to be developed into an annex. The Postmaster, Margaret L Sellers, had other plans. She made some kind of backroom deal with Helen Copley, the rich heiress that inherited the San Diego Union and Evening Tribune newspapers, to purchase some property far up highway 15 in northern San Diego. In between Mira Mesa and Rancho Bernardo, in the late 80s and early 90s, most of this area, now known as Carmel Mountain Ranch, was unspoiled rolling hills covered with scrub brush and crawling with wildlife. The new Plant would be part of the new community, which very soon replaced nature with houses, condos, townhomes, business parks, golf courses, strip malls, Costco, and the USPS.








We were all sent a newsletter in 1992, with a drawing of the soon-to-be completed plant on the cover, and a brief paragragh or two about the progress that was being made.

Before the building was completed, the employees were given the chance to tour the place. Of course I had to go see for myself where I would probably be spending most of my next 30 years of postal employment. Photographs were allowed, because the building wasn't full of mail yet. So we took the camera along to capture the moment in time for MLS P&DC. Now of course, photography is forbidden, without express written consent from the Management.



See the little boy in the photo? He is checking out the huge green sack sorting machine. This machine sorted sacks of mail on a conveyer way up high. When each sack got to the correct bin, it would slide down the huge wide metal slides to a resting point, where someone would take the sack and put it in a hamper or other container. When the Plant opened for business, many school tours went through the place. Kids were in awe of this machine. To some of the young ones, it looked more like a cool Disneyland ride, and they wanted to go up those stairs and give it a try. This machine was replaced 4 years ago by a bigger automated machine, and ironically, the new-fangled replacement was installed at the old moldy Midway building, because MLS has run out of space. Tours at MLS P&DC aren't nearly as interesting for the little ones since the big Green Sack Sorter went away.



Here I am in the new lobby of the box section. I get enthusiastic for weirdest things.

In a typical twist of irony, Margaret L Sellers didn't live to see her pet project completed. She died in July of 1993, just before the final strokes of paint were dry. It was good that she wasn't around to see the city put a street sign up at one of the driveway entrances. She would have pitched a fit. The genious who made the sign mispelled her name, "Margaret L Sellars Driveway" That sign stayed up for months before it was replaced with the proper spelling of her last name.

It was nice to move from the dark, dingy, rat and flea-infested Midway facility, with asbestos in the floor and walls, with cracks in the building from many previous earthquakes, with flooding issues due to being below sea level in what was once a marshy landfill, into a sparkling clean, brand new building, built to modern code.

Problem was, it was so darned far away for most of the hundreds of employees. We had to decide whether to run our cars into the ground, or buy into the new neighborhood and into a house priced far more than a postal worker could afford. Many chose to buy too much house, and now that the overtime and holiday work has dried up, these people are in financial trouble, as are so many who bought overpriced homes thinking the economy would continue to boom.

I chose to stay in the inner city, but I had a very iffy old Chevy that had let me down more times than I could count. I bought a new Saturn station wagon when we were moved to the new building in 1993. By the time I replaced that dependable little Saturn in 2008, I had driven it every day for 15 years and put over 300,000 miles on it. Great car. Great Mileage, too. Makes me wonder why the Government made GM sell off the brand.

The cost of transporting all that mail in all those tractor-trailers all the way up to the new place, and then all the way back down to San Diego, to the carrier stations and to the airport, is astonishing. It has been an incredible waste and in my opinion, a very bad idea. But it is what it is. Last summer, when gas was at $4.00 a gallon, Management constantly complained that part of their deficit has to do with transportation costs. Duh. We all have to live with the results of the sweetheart deal made by two women who are long-deceased.



Here is the backside of the PO Box section. The clerks take the box mail, sort it by box number, and get it all up in the boxes by the cut off time every morning. There are hundreds and hundreds of boxes. PO Boxes, by the way, the the best deal in town. Cheaper by far than anything from the competition. I know because at one time I had one of the competitors boxes. Its convenient too, because you can go on vacation for 3 weeks and the box clerk will just bundle out your mail and save it for you, if your box gets too full. Even though I work up at this place, I still kept my PO box at the old place. I guess I'm just attached to my PO box address.



This is our cafeteria. The food isn't so great, but at least we have good coffee and snacks if we need them. The interesting thing about Postal food service is, by Federal Law, the contract has to go to a blind person. Some are more blind than others. We had a guy for decades that we never knew was blind, because he didn't need any help doing anything. The next contract owner needed a guide dog, and the one we have now is visually impaired but gets around with a little help.



This is the general work room floor, without any sorting machines. They told us that the square footage of the floor is equal to 5 football fields in length. It seems bigger when you walk around the entire building every night in the course of your job. Now, you cannot see from one end to the other because it is packed with robots, cancellers, and automated machines that sort letters and flats (large envelopes and magazines). There are catwalks all over the building, for Postal Inspectors to surreptitiously watch us to ensure the sanctity of the mails. We have been at the MLS (named for Margaret L Sellers)Plant for 16 years now. And I'm working on running my second Saturn into the ground. If it's as good as my first one, I should get another 170,000 miles out of it. I hope. So far, so good.

If you ever get the chance to tour your Processing Facility, you should do it. I took a tour of the old Midway building before I became a postal employee. And I was in absolute awe of the monumental task I saw in front of me, and all the people doing their jobs, whether it was driving a forklift or a mule, pushing equipment here and there, keying on huge LSMs (now extinct letter sorting machine)or manually tossing letters into cases. There were also the custodians keeping all the paper and rubber bands and plastic from clogging the aisleways, the drivers constantly bringing in mail and taking mail away. It was amazing, and I knew after that tour that I wanted to be a part of that vital work.

So hail to the mighty MLS P&DC. It's seen alot of mail, alot of people, alot of machines come and go. If the walls could talk, there are millions of stories it could tell. Luckily, the walls, and those inspectors in the catwalks stand silently, watching.