Recently reintroduced congressional legislation would get rid of increased shipping costs from last year.
Despite a continued increase in shipping costs, the fight goes on for the Marlton-based Operation Yellow Ribbon of South Jersey and its mission to ship care packages to men and women serving overseas in the U.S. armed forces.
With the military support group nearly a month into 2019, the group and others like it continue to live under changes from the United States Postal Service that effectively doubled costs last year to ship care packages to military locations outside of the United States.
From the founding of OYRSJ through the end of 2017, the postal service used multiple sites across the country (such as a location in New York previously utilized by OYRSJ) to process packages addressed to military locations outside of the country.
Then, starting in 2018, the postal service consolidated those sites to one location in Chicago, forcing OYRSJ and other groups to pay additional domestic shipping charges to get their parcels to Chicago, before the packages could then finally be shipped overseas.
“That increase has led to penalizing our brave women and men serving our great country as mail has been reduced,” said OYRSJ Chair Dave Silver in an email to supporters. “Whether it has been nonprofits shutting down completely and not sending anything or others reducing the amount of what they send, it has had an exponential impact.”
For OYRSJ in particular, while the group spent more than $55,000 in 2017 to ship about 1,900 packages weighing more than 62,000 pounds, in 2018, the group sent fewer packages with a reduced total weight yet still spent more than $100,000 in shipping costs.
“This shows the impact created by the USPS changing their logistics for how military mail and non-flat rate care packages are handled,” Silver said.
Yet the pleas of Silver and other similar groups haven’t gone unnoticed by local legislators.
Last summer, former Congressman Tom MacArthur (R-NJ 3), Rep. Donald Norcross (D-NJ 1), as well as several other members of Congress, sponsored the “Care Packages for Our Heroes Act of 2018,” which directed the Postal Regulatory Commission to adapt the pricing model used for packages shipped by priority mail from the United States to a foreign Army Post Office, Fleet Post Office or Diplomatic Post Office.
Recently, Norcross reintroduced that legislation as the “Care Packages for Our Heroes Act of 2019.”
Similar to the 2018 legislation, the Care Packages for Our Heroes Act of 2019 would get rid of the additional shipping costs added last year and allow nonprofits to potentially send an increased number of care packages once more.
“We should do everything in our power to lift the spirits of the brave men and women who are serving our country overseas — not place obstacles in the way of those trying to support our troops,” Norcross said in a release commenting on the legislation.
Silver also thanked Norcross for continuing to advocate on behalf of OYRSJ and other similar groups, and with that, Silver asked supporters to request friends, family and anyone else to contact their congressional representative to ask them to support the legislation as well.
“Support the Care Packages for Our Heroes Act of 2019 so those serving our great country don’t see any reduction of morale-boosting mail they may receive from a loved one or even a stranger,” Silver said.
