Last year, the United States Postal Service delivered 7.2 billion packages across the country, which is about 1 billion more than it delivered in 2019. Getting all those parcels from point A to point B isn’t always easy, especially in rural towns.

One November day in Bemidji, Minnesota, a town about 100 miles south of the Canadian border, thousands of Amazon packages flooded the local post office, delaying outgoing mail and burdening mail carriers. Caroline O’Donovan, a reporter at The Washington Post, covered the story.

“This is one of the only stories I’ve reported where before I even asked anyone a question, people all around me were discussing this issue,” O’Donovan said. “So yes, people are definitely upset.”

“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal spoke with O’Donovan about how Amazon deliveries are burdening rural post offices. Below is an edited transcript of their conversation.

Kai Ryssdal: Tell us what has been happening in beautiful downtown Bemidji, Minnesota, since Amazon came to town.

Caroline O’Donovan: Yeah, so the local post office in Bemidji, Minnesota, was totally overwhelmed with Amazon packages from one day to the next. They started getting thousands of Amazon packages around 5 o’clock in the morning. And that is causing difficulties not only for the postal workers who are working superlong hours, but also for the residents of Bemidji. This was all they could talk about in town when I was there because the mail is getting delayed. Because of all the Amazon packages piling up, people, and especially businesses in the downtown district, were concerned that they wouldn’t be getting the checks, bills, invoices, credit card statements that they need.

Ryssdal: Just to be clear here, this is not just a Bemidji thing, right? It’s large swaths of rural areas of this country.

O’Donovan: We’ve, I’ve heard reports about similar issues in Portland, Maine, in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, most recently in the San Juan Islands in Washington. Those rural deliveries are really expensive, no matter who you are. They’re really long drives, it’s the last thing anyone wants to pay for. And that’s sort of why it falls to the Postal Service, and why, therefore, it becomes such a big problem for the mail in those areas.

Ryssdal: So, let’s talk business model here for a second. And we should say as we get into this that the U.S. Postal Service occasionally, maybe even right now, I don’t know, buys advertising on this program. So just so everybody knows where we stand, we cover them like any other companies you might have heard elsewhere on public radio. The postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, has said we need Amazon’s business to, in essence, stay afloat because they lose many billions of dollars a year.

O’Donovan: Yeah. So, a lot of people assume that the U.S. Postal Service is funded by taxpayer dollars. But it’s not, like you just said. It’s operating as an independent agency, like a business. And so, they need to have revenue. They lost $6.5 billion last year, it’s no secret. I think that the paper mail isn’t exactly, you know, increasing in volume. And so, the plan there is to, sort of, to have the Postal Service turn a little bit more into a logistics company where they pick up more parcel volume, which they get paid more for, obviously. And that’s his plan to kind of save the post office, if you will.

Ryssdal: How come Amazon packages in Bemidji get priority over the bills and checks and other mail items that the residents of Bemidji are looking for?

O’Donovan: So, a crucial thing that the post office would say is it’s not that Amazon packages get priority, although that is functionally how the postal workers there feel in practice based on what’s happening, but it’s not necessarily that there’s a directive to prioritize Amazon over say, Target. And you know, you did your disclaimer, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post, so I’ll do mine too so I don’t feel left out.

Ryssdal: Fair enough. Fair enough. The more people know, the merrier. So where does this end? Because it’s not like we’re going to be ordering less stuff online, whether it’s Amazon or what have you.

O’Donovan: The Postal Service told me that their goal is to have the packages in the mail be totally coordinated and seamless and go together and to resolve the issue. In terms of the post office changing its contract with Amazon, that’s not a deal that the public is allowed to know what’s in it. They consider it proprietary, or business secrets, and we don’t know what’s in it. So, in terms of what’s going to happen there, I think we have to see on that one.

Ryssdal: Last thing about Bemidji. Are people just steamed?

O’Donovan: This is one of the only stories I’ve reported where before I even asked anyone a question, people all around me were discussing this issue. So yes, people are definitely upset. There are people who have medical documents, you know, stuff for their insurance. There are folks who don’t like to do their billing online. But what I didn’t necessarily realize is that there are these businesses that are not necessarily like super-old-fashioned businesses, by any means, but that save a lot of money doing their billing and their banking and their invoicing in the mail. They don’t do electronic payments because they’re small businesses and that ends up being a big cut of what their revenue would be. And that is something that surprised me.