A week ago Monday I had two computer parts shipped from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, a suburb of Tulsa. Thankfully, I wasn’t in desperate need of them for they took the long way to Superior. The tracking report indicated from Broken Arrow they went to Tulsa. Instead of heading north from Tulsa they went south to Dallas. They reached Omaha at 6:14 a.m. Friday but they weren’t delivered in Superior until Tuesday.
In the 1970s, Superior Publishing was asked to partner with a printer at Henderson to print and mail the Rural Electric Nebraskan magazine. Handling the Rural Electric Nebraskan was a profitable venture for us and the decision was made to expand our mail processing facility. Additional equipment was purchased with the hope we could attract more of that business to Superior because of our excellent postal connections.
The magazine’s publisher was pleased with our service. By entering the publication in the mail in more central Nebraska as compared to Omaha, we were able to obtain overnight delivery to all parts of the state.
That was the only magazine we ever processed but in the following years we obtained a number of newsletters to print and mail. I was even invited to speak at a postmaster’s meeting in Lincoln and recount our success story about bringing work to rural Nebraska. At that time, postal supervisors pledged to work with us and attempt to bring more mail volume to rural Nebraska.
The Superior economic development group seized on the idea and retained the services of a consultant to try an attract a mail fulfillment center to Superior. The only telephone company then serving Superior put the kabosh on that idea by informing us that they were unwilling to support the telephone lines such a service would require.
The phone company may have known something we didn’t. Since then the United States Postal Service has blown us out of the water with service cuts.
Instead of mail being sent from Superior to the delivering office, all mail entered at Superior must now be taken to Omaha for processing.
This isn’t a unique situation.
Monday we received in our Superior office two bundles of newspapers published at Belleville. One bundle was entered into the mail on Nov. 27 and the other on Dec. 4.
Compared to the newspaper delivery, the computer parts delivery was pretty speedy. It is approximately 382 miles from Broken Arrow to Superior and 38 miles from Belleville to Superior.
But hopefully the postal system is making improvements. We received a subscription renewal on Saturday from Craig Barfknecht, a Harvard resident.
When Craig first moved to Harvard, some 45 miles north of Superior, he received The Express on Thursdays. In more recent times, it wasn’t reaching his home until Tuesday, sometimes Wednesday. But the last few weeks it has been reaching Harvard on Friday. Craig likes that and that’s pretty good service considering the paper has to travel about 350 miles before it is delivered.
The mail may be slow but most weeks we offer a faster alternative. Generally the paper is available before 5 p.m. Wednesdays to those with e-subscriptions.
When we first introduced the e-sub option, we didn’t expect it would interest local residents. We were wrong.
One of those local residents had a few words for us Thursday morning when she couldn’t that day’s edition on-line. It was there but in uploading the content to the web we had made a date entry error. Instead of entering Dec. 5, we entered Nov. 5.
Took a phone call to our service provider and about 15 minutes of work to change the entry date.
It was a learning experience for us but reassuring to know the paper is still wanted.
If you are reading this column and don’t have an e-sub, we encourage you to call our office today and join our growing list of e-subscribers.
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