Brief by Central Staff
Colorado Central – October 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
Your magazine is in the mail…really.
Some of our subscribers mentioned that their August editions arrived much later than usual. So late, indeed, that many despaired of ever getting it at all, although, as best we know, they all eventually arrived.
We dispatched new copies to anyone who told us about the problem, and looked for a pattern in the problem, which affected subscribers in Denver, Durango, and along the Front Range.
Unless your zip code starts with 811 or 812, your magazine goes from Salida to the Bulk Mail Center in Denver — which meant all the late ones we heard about. Apparently things got backed up there, and so we can blame the Evil Large City for our problems.
Another suspect is the UPS strike, which began at the start of August, and increased postal volume considerably. But our bags went to Denver on July 22, ten days before the strike began Aug. 1, and the Salida postmaster told us that our magazines should have been processed days before the strike.
So we don’t know what happened. We try to hold up our end of the process by devoutly following the Postal Service sorting standards for bulk mail, by applying Postnet bar codes to the mailing labels, and by requesting address corrections.
We’ve considered upgrading our mail permit from Standard Mail (formerly Third-Class, and better known as Bulk Mail) to Periodical Mail (formerly Second-Class). But the permit costs $250 that we’d rather spend on other things, it requires considerably more paperwork with each mailing, and it comes with no assurance of improved delivery times.
So for the time being, we’ll work with what we have, and try to prod the Postal Service into holding up its end of the deal.
And if you don’t get your magazine in a timely way (within Colorado, you should have it by the first of the month), let us know, so that we can prod.
As for our schedule, we generally mail Colorado Central on the penultimate Tuesday of the prior month. That is, this October edition was mailed on the next-to-the-last Tuesday of September, the 23rd.
The “generally” means that sometimes we’re ambitious and get it out on that Monday, and occasionally we’re slothful and don’t get it addressed and to the post office until that Wednesday.
That’s been our schedule since we started. We’ve scheduled one exception, the January, 1998, edition. Normally it would go out Dec. 23, but on account of the holidays and our own desires to enjoy them, we advanced the deadlines, so that edition is scheduled to be mailed a week earlier, on Dec. 16.