Postal Service machines being sold online with no backup plan for in-service units, workers say

BOSTON — U.S. Postal Service workers in New England are seeing the equipment they used to use turn up in online auctions.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy claims the Postal Service has stopped dismantling mail processing machines, but that doesn’t mean the ones already broken down will be replaced. And it looks like sorting facilities won’t be getting their old machines back because they’re being sold online.

Postal workers in Maine say they found equipment from their old facility, as well as ones from Portsmouth and Manchester, New Hampshire, and one from Boston up for sale on the site govdeals.com.

That equipment is being sold from anywhere $4,500 to as little as $106.

One of those Postal Service workers says seeing the equipment being sold is troubling.

“I would believe it would cost upwards of a million to replace it, if we needed one here,” union president Scott Adams said. “I mean, why the service doesn’t hang on to these machines, tarp them, mothball them, whatever?”

Postal Service workers say those old machines could be used when mail volume picks up or for parts if another machine breaks down.

They say without the older machines, there is no plan B.

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Cox Media Group