UPS Service Centers Close in Rural America

Iowa farmer Meredith Nunnikhoven shares impacts...

Jan 04, 2025

My friend Meredith Nunnikhoven of Barnswallow Flowers in Oskaloosa separated Dahlia bulbs in a multipurpose machine shed at her farm as she told me about the jam that she and other small business owners in the area are in.

The jam extends to much of rural America, as UPS is closing over 200 service centers in rural areas. “The company is consolidating locations as part of its “Network of the Future” initiative, which aims to reduce UPS’ reliance on manual labor in its package sortation operations and save $3 billion by the end of 2028.”

But that’s all good, right? Of course, there’s no mention of the number of jobs lost to automation and the loss of important mailing services in rural America that might shutter small businesses.

According to KTIV, a center is closing in Sioux City, Iowa, and WICS reports how the closures are impacting central Illinois. A Google search yields a dozen or so other local stories across rural America. The closings are still unfolding across the nation, and Meredith has heard rumors that the drop-off location south of Oskaloosa will soon close.

Barnswallow Flowers grows many flowers for local consumption, but the Dahlia business is worldwide, and efficient shipping is critical to her business.

Here is how Meredith describes her Dahlia business:

Dahlias Grown for the Greater Earthly Good

Barnswallow's Dahlias are grown sustainably; chemical-free, outside in the sunshine, with no artificial fertilizers, and a healthy crop rotation. They are lovingly divided by the female hands that grow them, stored over the winter, and shipped with the utmost care in the spring. What can grow at our farm is tested by the harshest weather elements. We only sell what we like to grow and can't wait to share our carefully curated collection with you! -Farmer Meredith & The BSF Flock

Meredith also sells her innovative compostable vases and pots, for which a patent is pending.

Meredith called me in November and wanted to share how the potential closing of a UPS Customer Service location in Oskaloosa would hurt her small business and others. So one afternoon I drove over to visit with her. I walked into the multipurpose machine shed where she often works, and found her processing Dahlias, and talking on the phone, with an untouched sandwich and drink in front of her. After a little small talk, we got down to business. My questions are in bold and her answers are in regular text.

So tell me what’s happening Meredith.

So I first found out that this was happening by a casual remark that the store--the room was closing, it's a room. It's not a store. It's not a brick-and-mortar store. It's not franchised. It's a room inside a UPS warehouse with 20 to 30 trucks there.

There was an article released in March, which I sent to you saying they're going to close over 200 some stores to automate things. This is not a store. It's a room. It's a drop-off room. Where you scan packages, you can pay for your package. So if you have an Amazon package, Amazon has automated their packages where if you return them. They give you a scan code. Well, you can only have that scanned at a UPS facility.

So if this room closes in Oskaloosa?

We’re going to have to drive to Indianola, now to have that service. That's two counties away. That's two counties away, over an hour away. And can you imagine doing that in the middle of winter on that two-lane highway?

From Oskaloosa, really? Where's the closest one to the east?

Washington, maybe. I’ve heard Ottumwa is closing, but it’s bad. Anyways, no one goes down there (the Ottuma office has since closed).

Are there third-party facilities you can use?

The problem with third-parties is they’re just, they're just a place to hold your package. They don't want any responsibility for your package while it's there and so you sign your life away when you drop that package and you just hope that the truck is going to come and pick it up.

Third-party drop-off centers can’t scan Amazon codes to produce a shipping label. Mahaska Drug confirms this. Third-party locations often don’t have secure areas to hold packages and they don’t insure them from the time the customer drops to when they're picked up by UPS. While the third-party is being helpful in providing at least a place for drop-off to occur, it comes at the risk of the shipping customer.

When I called for a pick-up after an order was placed, UPS said that it would be four days from the time I called. My customers are expecting a quick turnaround for low-cost grown shipments. If I have to schedule a truck, that lengthens the amount of time my products can get to eager customers.

What do you send?

For one, we ship our compostable vase (and Dahlia tubers, Tulip bulbs, and Peony tubers). We're in a beta testing program right now and some people want it shipped overnight. They want to pay for that shipping. Well, if they order it on that day, I'm not going to be able to drop it off to UPS anymore. I would have to drive to Indianola and hope I get there before they close. So, same-day drop shipments are going to impact me because my boxes are bigger than that door--there's a little drop box.

But there's only certain size packages that can fit in that like an envelope and where's that? I mean there's the one sitting outside of that UPS facility and there's one up by the mall. These little tiny tiny dropbox stations, they're only meant for documents or really small packages. They're not meant for like a 10 by 10 by 10 box, you know, something as big as a basketball or larger, you can't drop that there.

So, for us, not having same-day, shipments will hurt us and the type of customers that we have, and the fulfillment that we can give to people. Now this is also critical for us because I'm shipping often out to the coast and I need all the extra time that I can get to get to them. So if someone does order it on the day and I want to get it out, I want to get out as soon as possible because ground going to Rhode Island, for example, takes a little bit longer than going ground down to Missouri. So speed is important. Speed is very important to people. Speed is part of your brand. And people sign up to buy your products if you can fulfill things quickly.

So why would I not try to do that as I'm building a company and a brand around my new product? The compostable vase, we also ship value tubers, okay, they can't be frozen, they can't be messed with.

I like to drop it off at a UPS facility when they're ready to be shipped. It's often not able to be determined very well. It has to do with the season, has to do with the timing, has to do with the labor and personnel. It has to be flexible.

Why not have a truck come here and pick up the shipment?

I don't want to put on a truck to come here every day to pick something up. There's nothing to pick up right now. You can do that, but that doesn't really work for us. It doesn't cash flow for us it's 7 to 10 dollars possibly a day for a truck pickup. It’s about $20 for a random pick-up schedule. If you schedule for pick-up daily, that is also a cost.

Yeah. So, if you're a business that has something to ship out every day that might work for you. But because we're seasonal, because we're small, we're watching our pennies.

That drop-off place was critical for us to know that we had it there. We could also back up. The van might have 100 packages in the van. Back right up to the conveyor belt. They'd scan it right there. And we knew that all our packages were safe and in the right spot.

Why not use the United States Postal Service?

We need speedy shipping, which the USPS doesn’t support. It’s important. That little room has been here for over 30 years. People are depending on it, not just from Mahaska County, Poweshiek, Keokuk, Wapello, Marion all these other counties that touch us. Their people come here to use this too. So this is not just going to affect Mahaska County, it's going to affect every county that touches us. USPS doesn’t have adequate customer service capabilities to track packages and to find lost packages. If your package is lost or damaged, the claim process doesn’t match the capabilities of UPS. USPS is not built for the customer service needs that a custom critical company like us needs.

I don't understand how anyone can allow this not to stay functional. It's not a franchise, it's not a brick-and-mortar. The person who works the desk has two other jobs. So they can't be costing UPS in general that much money to open up this room for just four hours a day.

Okay, there's also insurance. Some of the packages I send out are worth 1,000’s of dollars. Because of what's inside. Well, USPS can't insure that. That’s why companies like UPS exist to support those needs.

I know that if I ship out through UPS I can get that insured and I can hold them accountable. If a package is damaged, or if something happens along the way, USPS doesn't have that type of infrastructure. They also don't have Customer Critical Care. So if my package gets lost, USPS does not really have the services in place to go and find that.

And UPS does.

For example, I had someone who was shipped tulip bulbs to the wrong state. Completely wrong address. We were able to verify with UPS how that happened and it wasn't UPS’s fault but they were able to help us. There's no one that I can really call with USPS; they're different services for different types of clientele.

All of the time we were talking Meredith had a sandwich and drink in front of her. She slumped in her chair, near exhaustion.

“Take a bite,” I said.

I haven't eaten today, she replied. I'm cold and frustrated Dr. Bob. I'm like the police of rural America left and right. I don't understand it…

So this is going to impact senior citizens, who maybe don't drive beyond a 30-mile radius. This is going to have impact people who don't have cars to travel long distances. Families that have small children that may not be able to break away or have other obligations. Definitely rural businesses are going to be impacted and anyone in the medical field needing test results. Sometimes they like to have a receipt. So when you're in a business and you're delegating a job, just someone you say get a receipt. So that you have the tracking number and you can follow it, right? That way, if it's lost. You can go and search for it. You can’t get that service with a drop box.

That's what's so powerful about having a local UPS Store because they have the tools in place to follow your package, once it's scanned in and it's paid for. So if I'm a veterinarian and I'm sending something small, I'm not going to drop it into that box because I need to know, I have to track that. Yeah, I have to. Okay. How can you tell a farmer? Oops. I just lost your lab results. You want to have that conversation with him?

No.

I'm wondering if someone is misunderstanding what's happening here at a higher level? You think they drove here and checked out the store? You think that (UPS) corporate knows? I'd like, I'd like to know if corporate actually came here and checked out this 10 by 10 room and deemed it not suitable or not beneficial to the community, and the Chamber of Commerce, the City Council, no one has been contacted about this to get any feedback to say is this really valuable or what does your community need?

So private companies get to do, whatever they want to do, then, how are we going to face things? Like Covid. Again if that were to happen, you know, the government has a responsibility to keep places like this open. Otherwise, anyone can do whatever they want.

So for me and my business, I was really depending on this little room. So the shit is going to hit the fan and everyone's going to realize that they can't drop their time-sensitive return packages off, you know, the public, the public is going to realize this and that’s going to be a huge problem for those people because they've had this system in place for a very long time.

Some people explained that the government has nothing to do with them closing, and it's like, I understand, but they have an obligation to keep critical services open. So if we don't hold, like, our lawmakers, accountable, to help us in these efforts, then we're not doing our votes justice.

In rural America this is like a service we need, so there are businesses that won't open here because of that, if they know that they can't have a functioning quality shipping service. I think they would consider that. That might be an issue. I don't know if they won't come here.

But for us, I'm like, wow, we have to change a lot of things. Now, we have to change our mindset of how we ship. We have to be more proactive. We can't be as reactive. I have to tell my customers, that they can't have things as fast as they could, which is fine, but it impacts possibilities for me. And impacts your bottom line, it impacts my bottom line, and in rural America guess what's most important to keep me alive?

My bottom line and pennies are hard to come by and everyone's like, you'll just wave it off. And no, that's a city mentality. Where you have all the benefits around you to succeed at your job. I don't have that. This little store was only open four hours a day and we worked around that. Now, we're not even going to have anything.

So that is a huge loss for someone building a business in rural Iowa, which is me. I was going to do these things here. I was maybe going to do some light manufacturing. I was going to put quotes together for four things to build my business to have this new company here. Well, if I don't have the simplicity of quality shipment services. That really changes what's possible.

Closing services, like this, is not a good thing for anybody. It's not just on the business side. It's on the residential side too. People rely on shipments coming here from all over the world for products and things because we're rural-based, and shipping is a big deal. You know, it keeps our community pumping and thriving money going in and out, like, that's important.

I left Meredith to her work and drove a few miles north to the UPS office. There was steady traffic; mostly women who were bringing back Amazon packages to return. The exchanges were quick. They handed their packages to a man working the counter, he scanned the packages, and then put them in a bin behind him. He told me that he wasn’t allowed to talk with me about the closing.

I spoke with an older man and asked him if he would talk with me about the impact of the closing on his business.

Okay, Sir, you own a small business; tell me what the impact of this is going to be on your business if they close this office.

If they close this terminal, I ship stuff out of here, two, or three times a week. I'll have to drive 30 miles to the Ottumwa terminal.

That's closing too.

Then we have no way to ship stuff. It costs so much for them to stop every day and not have anything to ship. Let alone having the computer setup. I'm 72 years old, I still work. I'm healthy.

I'm kind of computer illiterate. So this happening is going to be a real train wreck to my business. And a lot of other people in this community and area that farmers and soil samplers, bring in samples to send out for farmers all the time, and they close this customer service, it's going to be a real train wreck and damaging to the community.

My friend who lives south of town here uses it all the time, she says, she's gonna have to drive to Indianola.

That's what I heard. They have a UPS Store there. And that's going to be an hour, hour, and 10-minute drive.

And so, this will really hurt your business.

This will hurt my business

I hate to ask this question but could it, I mean, could it kill it?

I’m shipping out parts. I'm a manufacturer, I deliver everything that I manufacture, but for sending out parts and that I don't know what we'll do because we can send it to the postal service, but it takes so much longer to get there and they only accept certain size stuff.

And insurance, it’s an issue with them too, tracking insurance will be an issue. Some of the parts I ship out of here are 1,400 dollars.

Okay, so it's going to hurt your bottom line, no matter what?

Yes, it’s going to hurt the bottom line.

I spoke to two other business owners and the story was the same. The closing was going to impact their businesses in a major way.

I didn’t speak with any of the steady stream of mostly women who were dropping off packages. This was a routine for them. They had a four-hour window, and they were there to quickly drop off a package and get on their way.

I couldn’t help but think, however, that it was unlikely that they would drive to Indianola to get a package scanned. They would become dissatisfied consumers, accept the loss, and Amazon would profit.

I emailed UPS’s PR department about the situation and received a prompt reply. My annotations are in bold:

Thank you for reaching out. Here is some information you can use.

We are closing a select UPS Customer Centers across the U.S. to better meet our customers where they are (what about customers in rural areas? We are here). UPS Customer Centers are typically attached to UPS buildings in industrial locations (like in Oskaloosa—keep the rooms open.)

We will continue our high standard of customer service through a wide range of resources that are available to our customers, including UPS Drop Boxes, 10,000 full-service retail shipping locations, such as The UPS Store and Staples, as well as UPS Authorized Service Outlets & Providers to ship packages (we don’t have many of these city options, and some of them are closing). Typically, these locations are much closer and more accessible to most consumers (sure, most customers are in cities, but not here if rural ones are closed), providing a better customer experience (not for rural people) and more closely aligning with our customers’ preferences for more convenient and easily accessible drop-off options (not for rural people).

Alternatively, if customers need to simply pick up or drop off packages, our network of more than 20,000 nearby UPS Access Point locations are available. Access Point locations are available at independent merchants such as local delis, pharmacies, dry cleaners, and florists, as well as national partners such as The UPS Store, Michael’s and CVS (we don’t have these options).

I replied asking if they had considered the impacts of closing in rural areas. They responded:

I do not have additional information to share at this time, though I can tell you customers can also arrange for UPS to pick up their package by using UPS.com or calling 1-800-PICK-UPS.

It seems that they haven’t considered the impact on rural communities or aren’t willing to share them.

But here’s the bottom line from a previous statement they made:

“The company is consolidating locations as part of its “Network of the Future” initiative, which aims to reduce UPS’ reliance on manual labor in its package sortation operations and save $3 billion by the end of 2028.”

Given the traffic that I saw at the UPS location in Oskaloosa, there is no way that location isn’t making money. Perhaps it’s just not enough money for UPS to bother with, and at great costs to our rural communities. The UPS “Network of the Future” apparently doesn’t include much of rural America.

And what about the jobs lost? There will be a great many.

But hey, it’s just a “business decision, right? I can’t help but point out that CEO Carol Tomés pay was down in 2023, to only $19 million a year in total compensation, down from $27.6 million in 2021.

Look for similar issues that hurt rural communities should Trump choose to privatize the USPS.

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