Tuesday, December 31, 2013

2013 Postal Summary

This is the fourth year of the Going Postal annual postal summary. Dang, I've been at this a while now, huh? 2013 brought adventures up and down the east coast from Boston to Florida. I completed a few geographic postal milestones. And, of course, here are the summaries for 2010, 2011, and 2012. This year I visited 837 post offices and other postal facilities across 15 states and the District of Columbia, for a grand total of 5,758 offices. The longest trip I took this summer lasted 29 days, and though I only drove from New York as far as Georgia, my mileage could have taken me across the country twice. Below is my counties-visited map at the end of 2013. Counties visited for the first time -- namely in Appalachia and the Southeast -- are colored dark gray:


The overall count does not include former and discontinued post office locations, such as what is now the Municipal Building in Toccoa, Georgia:


I also make efforts to find and document freestanding mail processing facilities, such as the Logistics and Distribution Facility in Tampa, Florida:


I finally finished visiting every post office on Long Island, in May:


And just this past week I quit procrastinating and completed my visits to every single post office [plus carrier annex, Contract Postal Unit, and other mail processing facility] in New York City:


I visited as many as 30 post offices in one day. State by state, counting only distinct active postal locations:

New Jersey: 112 post offices
Focus/Foci: Northern New Jersey, central shore
(I have now visited more than 75% of the nearly 800 postal facilities in New Jersey.)

Massachusetts: 94
Worcester, southeast Massachusetts

Tennessee: 75
Eastern Tennessee: Bristol to Knoxville

Virginia: 68
I-81 corridor, south-central tier

North Carolina: 63
Southwest N.C., Greensboro

South Carolina: 61
Northwest S.C., southern shore to Charleston

Florida: 59
Tampa / Saint Petersburg

West Virginia: 55
Northeast panhandle, Beckley

Maryland: 54
Baltimore and D.C. suburbs

New York: 49
The South Fork of Long Island

Georgia: 46
Very southeast and northeast corners

Connecticut: 39
Hartford area

Pennsylvania: 29

District of Columbia: 16

Rhode Island: 11

Delaware: 6

The year also brought milestones 5,000 and 5,500...
#5,500: Petersburg, Virginia: Fort Lee Branch post office


Wishing you all a great 2014!