27587 sprawls over three counties

The 27587 ZIP Code is a monster, sprawling over 104.8 square miles of land and 5.3 of water in four counties and three cities. It had 53,860 residents in 2013 and 20,117 housing units.

It goes up to Grissom in Granville County and up almost to Youngsville in Franklin as well as down into Raleigh. Mail carriers have to go to the other side of Falls Lake on their routes and well past Rolesville on the east, delivering in the town and all the new subdivisions it has added. If you Google 27587 you can find a map.

In the last three years, most town and area residents are aware of the tremendous growth in residential housing inside and outside of Wake Forest – apartments, duplexes, townhouses and single-family houses. Every one of the people living in those new homes expects to get their mail – and so do all the people who moved here years ago. It puts tremendous pressure on the Wake Forest Post Office – which it appears not to be handling very well.

Examples: A veteran mail carrier recently quit his intown route and transferred to a rural route because his intown route had grown so large with all the new houses that he had to work overtime to complete it all. Rather than split the route and add a new carrier, the post office management complained about his overtime.

A new carrier was assigned but quit shortly after and residents learned that four carriers had to be assigned to that route on at least one day. Those residents have observed carriers putting one package in the mailbox and throwing a second package with the same delivery address back in the truck.

One person was tracking a large package from Best Buy that held their son’s special Christmas present. Late on the day it was scheduled for delivery they saw it had been returned to the post office as undeliverable. When they called the next morning, the person who answered said he would look for it but never called back, meaning the package is being returned to the store.

Tuesday night, mail was being delivered in that neighborhood by two people in a private car with a red light stuck on top and signs saying USPS slapped on the side. It was in a neighborhood not affected by the postal truck fire.

Rolesville Mayor Frank Eagles is aware of the Wake Forest Post Office problems and said this week he usually directs people to use the satellite office in the Ace Hardware store in Gateway Commons shopping center because of better service than in the Rolesville Post Office, which does not do any deliveries. All mail delivery was moved to Wake Forest several years ago.

“I’ve given up on them,” Eagles said this week, adding he uses UPS or other delivery services as much as he can. He complained that the office in Rolesville closes for an hour for lunch even though there are two people on the desk plus the postmaster. In Wake Forest with a much larger staff, the counter opens at 10 a.m., closes at noon for an hour, and then closes at the end of the day at 5 p.m.

Eagles and Town Manager Bryan Hicks recently visited the regional USPS office in Greensboro to complain about the local problems but found no help. “I don’t think they really care.”

Eagles is contemplating fighting the USPS recent requirement that subdivisions along with apartment complexes install mail kiosks in place of mail delivery to individual mail boxes in front of homes. He said he has the town attorney researching whether the town can refuse to comply.