Grand Junction Scarlet Post Office sorting facility reportedly in disarray

USPS carrier facility at 734 Scarlet: turmoil inside

It may look peaceful on the outside, but a longtime U.S. Postal Service employee at the Grand Junction Carrier Annex at 734 Scarlet Drive reports that inside the building the Postal Service is “going crazy lately.”

The employee reports, “We are delaying mail and it is running horribly.”

What’s going on and why is this happening?

“It started when they decided to lay off our newest hires,” the employee said:

“They claimed ‘lack of work’ as the reason, but since then, we’ve been 5 or 6 people short of a normal crew to process the mail. I worked over 80 hours last week and we can’t catch up. In addition to that, we process mail for DHL, UPS and FedEx as part of an agreement with them. They dropped half of a semi [truck full] of bags of mail at our office at Scarlet Drive on Wednesday, and all of that mail is still sitting there.”

Delayed mail photo from 2020 (Photo credit: SaveThePostOffice.com)

The employee believes that while all post offices are “a bit short staffed,” none of them are “as bad as Scarlet.”

Delayed mail and packages

It is unclear how much time will be added to people’s mail delivery as a result of the disarray at the Scarlet facility, but it is certain to delay mail noticeably in the coming days and possibly weeks for local households as well as businesses.

The U.S. Post Office has been hurt by the policies of former President Trump’s Postmaster, Louis DeJoy, whose policies have been causing delays in the mail for years now. Postal carriers across the country say the Post Office is suffering from a severe shortage of employees, and the problem is most acute in rural areas.

“Many of us are now working 7 days a week and around 12 or more hours per day,” the Grand Junction Scarlet facility employee says. “I worked 16 hours on Saturday. Some of us have volunteered to work even more, but they said we no longer can. I think they are fudging the numbers because it doesn’t seem to be an issue like it normally does when mail is delayed. Either upper management doesn’t know [about this], or they don’t care. Due to the fact that mail is not getting fully processed daily, businesses as well as residential customers are not getting important mail that they are expecting. Unfortunately, we have an ’empty equipment truck’ where we normally put the cages after we empty them. A large amount of mail has sat in there for nearly a week now. I don’t think it will be caught up for a long long time.”

The Scarlet mail handling facility sorts the mail for carriers in the 81504, 81505, 81506, 81507 and 81521 (Fruita) zip codes.

“I think the best way people can address the issue internally is to be vocal [at their post office] about any mail that is being delayed. It is hard to know if it is there, though. Also, the supervisors are scanning mail that [that has been given] to the wrong carriers as ‘delivered.’ The Postal Policy is that if mail is mis-sent, we are supposed to re-sort as soon as possible and take it out to the carriers to deliver. Instead, they falsify the scans as ‘delivered’ in the office and then give them back to the carriers the next day to deliver for real.”

This can create inaccurate delivery information, for example for tracked mail.

Another problem: An employee with a record of assault is being allowed to work at Aspen facility

The employee also reports that an abusive person with a history of assault has been allowed to keep working in a supervisory capacity at the USPS facility in Aspen. “They keep letting [him] supervise employees…the Postal Service has just gone crazy lately,” the Scarlet employee says.

“His name is Gregg McCorkle. He assaulted two carriers he worked with in Aspen, with almost no consequences. I have a police report that covers that assault as well.”

Here is a record of one of McCorkle’s arrests:

Arrest record for postal supervisor in Aspen, Gregg T. McCorkle, showing one of his charges. He continues to work at USPS, to the great discomfort of co-workers

Additional documentation:

  • McCorkle Police Report (PDF, 30 pages pertaining to arrest for assault against a co-worker, 9/22/2020, restraining orders, victim statement)
  • McCorkle assault 2001 arrest, multiple charges (PDF, from Colorado Bureau of Investigation)

  18 comments for “Grand Junction Scarlet Post Office sorting facility reportedly in disarray

  1. This is irresponsible and inaccurate reporting. REAL news would have reached out for a comment before defaming me with the sole purpose of being the mouthpiece for a disgruntled employee. The person I was charged with assaulting was subsequently charged with false reporting and all charges were thrown out. Do what you should have done in the first place and do whats right by taking this post down or removing my name. You should be ashamed of yourself.

      • Of course i dont have “authoritive documentation” for something that officially no longer happened, and libelously stating that i am abusive and have a record of assault when YOU merely have a record that shows i was charged, but not convicted goes against one of the great tenets of America that I was innocent until proven guilty which never happened. That this was your reply shows your lack of integrity. You are no journalist. Merely a neighborhood gossip with an unimpressive soapbox.

        • Documentation of your arrest for assault and battery by Officer Ryan Turner in September of 2020 is publicly available on the government website Aspen.gov at http//www.aspen.gov/Archive/ViewFile/Item/798, so it remains public information.

        • Dismissed charges don’t mean you weren’t arrested, and it doesn’t expunge the arrest record. You are only absolved of repercussions from it.

          You need to file a JDF 477 form to seal the record. In the meanwhile, take ownership for your inaction filing one sooner instead of flying off the handle upbraiding strangers using publicly available resources.

          • He continues to do this and his Postmaster is protecting him. As you can see by him attacking this woman online by providing no proof his issues haven’t gone away. Instead he will harass, bully, and stalk until he can get to you. The same report is online and the same behavior is still occurring. The larger question is why the Postmaster will unequivocally lay down his own career for this one employee at the risk of all the other employees. That is wherein lies the story.

  2. Along with Healthcare, Education, and, Transportation, and Immigration reform, I believe the Post office system needs to be and will be reformed. Things work differently in parts of Europe. There is very little junk mail in Europe, probably because there is not such a bulk mail discount for its delivery. While processing junk mail is inexpensive for facilities in the US, it skews the productivity metrics of the facility, and it should not be the primary mission. Junk mail is also not very green.
    Employees in Europe, unlike the US, are not turned into de-facto contractors by offering overtime as a cheaper alternative to proper staffing. Personally, I would love to be a US Postal employee but access to jobs is very controlled. Daily delivery happens M-F in Latvia, but the deliverer has additional responsibilities such as distributing government cash disbursements.
    It appears that the US delivery system is wrought with protectionism and agency effect. Throwing money at it will not solve the problem, but reform will.

    Side note: I would like to see a thread started on aid to Ukraine. I replied to a somewhat off-topic Boebert thread a few weeks ago, but it was not published. I thought I was respectful, but I was definitely critical of some people’s views. Generally, I think that debate is healthy, but I also respect the decisions of the blog regarding what to publish.

  3. I’m definitely missing mail. So are family members. Who do we contact?? I have an Amazon package that on USPS website just says it’s gone. It was scanned for delivery Friday and poof. Gone.

  4. I spoke with my cardiologist today asking about a letter I mailed the 9th. They never got it. This was GJ-to-GJ mail. Tomorrow I will reprint and drive over there and hand deliver. Seems like the ‘DeJoy and DeStroy’ plan is working – hope they can get rid of him, this country still needs postal service.

  5. Last Friday I had a Thanksgiving card forwarded to me. 2 months to get to a forwarded address. I was hired by the post office post office in Grand Junction about 2 or 3 years ago. It was obvious it was a mess. I lasted through orientation and that was it. I was not impressed with the people in charge. Also was not told of the true situation regarding hours. I didn’t know that until I had a day with an actual carrier, who told me the truth.

    • It’s the way Grand Junction is, the energy is like that all over, it was here in 75, it is still here now. There is a curse on this valley by the Ute nation. Be a whistle blower and speak up in all these operations. Good luck.

  6. There has been a noticeable decline in service quality over the past year. For most of the year, hold mail requests were ignored. Several UPS to USPS packages were delayed by weeks, with UPS claiming they had been delivered to USPS and USPS claiming that they hadn’t been received. If that ‘last mile’ service is destroyed by incompetence, then USPS’ last source of income will be gone. It is heartbreaking to see this happen because Scarlett employees and carriers that we’ve interacted with have been good. It would be great to see them treated with some care and respect.

    Do you suppose we should contact Boebert’s office to see what she can do to rectify this situation?

  7. If you have a P.o. box because they refuse to deliver mail anywhere except miles away, you now have to pay close to $200 for the box. We avoid using the PO for anything because it has failed because of the thug and DeJoy, a blithering idiot. They want to make the PO private and then a letter will cost several dollars and may ever show up. Fed Ex recently took a week to deliver a medical device, so they are failing too, as is the country.

    • wow, becoming more aware of the problem. The tech age is the Aquarian age (two parallel waves, air) , the post office will be history. Sounds like, in truth, it is being broken down little by little like other structures. It’s the way things are going. I say keep it alive as long as possible.

  8. I support the U.S. Post Office 100%. My dad collected stamps, when he passed his huge leather stamp book was left open on his mahogany desk. At that earlier time, 1993, his collection sold at the yard sale for $7,000.
    As a child I would assist him soaking his collected stamps before removing them, with tweezers, from the envelope. All my life I collected stamps, my parents traveled the world 69 countries, so I had quite a collection! as we WROTE LETTERS. That is how my adopted family operated. Through letters. I consider it a fine art which I practice regularly with my photo card making.
    I give no second thoughts to the price of a stamp when it is a heartfelt jester in itself of me connecting with someone, or getting a bill mailed in time. When the stimulus checks arrived I went to the post office and bought a hundred dollars worth for a starter of all the new commeritives. When I was active in our Sierra Club chapter here I got to write an article about the Green Stamp, ECOlogy supportive. Once I had collected over an apple box of stamps from letters from all over the world , unfortunately I was tossing out things to move back to Grand Junction, and gave them all to the neighbor downstairs.! I regret that.
    I think of the Pony Express days and so ‘that’s ok’. I do not text which alone limits who connects with me, and having to talk on the phone much, people don’t do anymore when they can text. Then there was the quick fix, an email. Well, people dismiss emailing because of all the junk to go through.
    KEEP THE POST OFFICE ALIVE! Buy those beautiful commemorative stamps representing something with a purpose in recognition of times past present and future. Do your mailing through the post office. That Thug Trump appointed destroyed a lot of what I depended on around Grand Junction, finding a mailbox close by a thing of the past.
    That’s all I have to say about the article because a positive thrust from the inside out is all I got.

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