At just 8 days old (thus the reference to a mohel -- it's Hebrew, look it up), this baby already passed 3,000 visits.
Thanks for the encouraging words, the gossip and tips (need more of those), and for spreading the word to friends and colleagues. I hope not just to write but to stir up conversations that help us all navigate these trying times. I welcome comments, criticism, suggestions, insights, and even guest postings. Feel free to "talk to the Tree" at dead.tree.edition@gmail.com
This truly is a labor of love intended to help this industry I love. Yeah, there are a few ads on the site, but they are mostly so I can occasionally splurge on a Starbucks double mocha latte like the office’s Web genius is always drinking instead of swilling the free crapola from my employer’s coffeepot. Besides, this old ink-on-paper dinosaur is fascinated by an ad model (Google AdSense) where the words “competitive separation”, “ratebase,” and “makegood” are never uttered. And I actually learned something from clicking on one of the ads. (Hint, hint . . .)
Anyway, shoutouts (Hey, if I'm going to do this Web thing, I occasionally have to talk like a Gen-Y) to the Web sites that have featured our posts, including PostalNews, PostalMag, Forestweb (a paid-subscription site), PostCom, and Postal Affairs Blog.
And be careful with that knife, rabbi!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
New Jersey Swallows Delaware (Death of the SCF, Part 2)
Contrary to what the U.S. Postal Service indicates, New Jersey has not gobbled up Delaware and St. Petersburg, FL has not been relocated to Tampa.
Perhaps as a precursor to more formal consolidation of dropship facilities ("network realignment" in postalspeak), USPS has been reshuffling its dropship map in recent months. Coupled with reduced dropship incentives for the Periodicals class and rising freight costs (see "Death of the SCF"), the result is that mail pools are delivering to fewer facilities. That has caused widespread confusion (and lost postal discounts) for publishers, other mailers, and their presort and freight vendors.
For example, USPS's official lists of dropship locations still show Wilmington, DE as a Sectional Center Facility (SCF) and Area Distribution Center (ADC) serving all of Delaware. But to get dropship discounts on Delaware copies, they have to be delivered to the South Jersey ADC in Bellmawr, NJ. St. Pete is still on the official list of SCFs (affectionately known as L005), but most Periodicals for St. Pete have to be dropshipped at the Tampa ADC to get SCF discounts.
In the mail-preparation process, the mailer still has to designate entries for St. Pete and Wilmington. But then USPS tells the logistics people to take those copies to Tampa and South Jersey. That has led to arguments between presort people and logistics people, sometimes in the same company.
When the Postal Service tries to change where incoming mail is handled, Congressmen and editorial writers get all up in arms about the loss of the local postmark -- and postal jobs. That happened in Wilmington, among other cities. But shifting where dropshipped mail is sorted rarely causes a media or political stir.
Some of the "redirections" apparently are in preparation for the Flats Sequencing System (FSS). For example, the Northern Virginia ADC and Dulles, VA SCF have both been redirected to the building in Sterling, VA where the first live runs of FSS are occurring. The North Metro, GA ADC and Atlanta SCF have been similarly redirected to a different Atlanta location.
The Postal Service's lists of ADCs and SCFs show no hint of these redirections. In fact, nowhere has USPS provided an explanation of redirections or a comprehensive list of these exceptions to the dropship list. The only way to find them is by navigating the USPS's clumsy FAST system (https://fast.usps.com/fast/). To make it even more confusing, some of the redirections apply only to certain sub-classes -- so that, for example, daily and weekly news Periodicals go to one facility and monthlies to another.
In hopes of clearing up the confusion, Dead Tree Edition is offering this exclusive (and, we hope, complete) list of redirections affecting at least some types of Periodicals flats. Listed first is the official ADC or SCF city, followed by the location of the dropship facility:
Perhaps as a precursor to more formal consolidation of dropship facilities ("network realignment" in postalspeak), USPS has been reshuffling its dropship map in recent months. Coupled with reduced dropship incentives for the Periodicals class and rising freight costs (see "Death of the SCF"), the result is that mail pools are delivering to fewer facilities. That has caused widespread confusion (and lost postal discounts) for publishers, other mailers, and their presort and freight vendors.
For example, USPS's official lists of dropship locations still show Wilmington, DE as a Sectional Center Facility (SCF) and Area Distribution Center (ADC) serving all of Delaware. But to get dropship discounts on Delaware copies, they have to be delivered to the South Jersey ADC in Bellmawr, NJ. St. Pete is still on the official list of SCFs (affectionately known as L005), but most Periodicals for St. Pete have to be dropshipped at the Tampa ADC to get SCF discounts.
In the mail-preparation process, the mailer still has to designate entries for St. Pete and Wilmington. But then USPS tells the logistics people to take those copies to Tampa and South Jersey. That has led to arguments between presort people and logistics people, sometimes in the same company.
When the Postal Service tries to change where incoming mail is handled, Congressmen and editorial writers get all up in arms about the loss of the local postmark -- and postal jobs. That happened in Wilmington, among other cities. But shifting where dropshipped mail is sorted rarely causes a media or political stir.
Some of the "redirections" apparently are in preparation for the Flats Sequencing System (FSS). For example, the Northern Virginia ADC and Dulles, VA SCF have both been redirected to the building in Sterling, VA where the first live runs of FSS are occurring. The North Metro, GA ADC and Atlanta SCF have been similarly redirected to a different Atlanta location.
The Postal Service's lists of ADCs and SCFs show no hint of these redirections. In fact, nowhere has USPS provided an explanation of redirections or a comprehensive list of these exceptions to the dropship list. The only way to find them is by navigating the USPS's clumsy FAST system (https://fast.usps.com/fast/). To make it even more confusing, some of the redirections apply only to certain sub-classes -- so that, for example, daily and weekly news Periodicals go to one facility and monthlies to another.
In hopes of clearing up the confusion, Dead Tree Edition is offering this exclusive (and, we hope, complete) list of redirections affecting at least some types of Periodicals flats. Listed first is the official ADC or SCF city, followed by the location of the dropship facility:
- Manchester, NH ADC: Nashua, NH
- Staten Island, NY SCF: Brooklyn, NY
- Glens Falls, NY SCF: Albany, NY
- Buffalo ADC, Jamestown, NY SCF, and Elmira, NY SCF: Rochester, NY
- DuBois, PA SCF: Johnstown, PA
- Oil City, PA SCF and Bradford. PA SCF: Erie, PA
- Wilmington, DE ADC: South Jersey
- Northern Virginia ADC and Dulles, VA SCF: Sterling, VA
- North Metro, GA ADC: Atlanta
- Lewisburg, WV SCF: Bluefield, WV
- Beckley, WV SCF: Charleston, WV
- Mid-Florida ADC: Orlando
- Manasota, FL ADC, St. Petersburg SCF, and Lakeland, FL SCF: Tampa
- McComb, MS and Columbus, MS SCFs: Jackson, MS
- Kalamazoo, Traverse City, and Gaylord, MI SCFs: Grand Rapids, MI
- St. Paul, MN ADC: Minneapolis
- Carol Stream, IL ADC and Palatine, IL SCF: Chicago
- Kankakee, IL SCF: Champaign, IL
- LaSalle, IL SCF: Bloomington, IL
- Galesburg, IL SCF: Peoria, IL
- New Orleans ADC, Baton Rouge ADC, and Mandeville, LA SCF: Port Allen, LA
- Greenville, TX SCF: North Texas (Coppell)
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Katahdin may enter green energy business
Katahdin’s closed paper mill in Millinocket, Maine may enter the “green” electricity business when it starts making SCA (supercalendered) paper again, its customers were told today.
The company is “proposing to retrofit a large, existing oil-fired boiler with a modern biomass gasifier,” Fraser Papers Limited stated in a letter to customers. Fraser operates Katahdin's mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket; both companies are subsidiaries of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management. Fraser has previously cited the use of more than two barrels of oil per ton of paper as the major reason that Millinocket’s one machine shut down in early September.
The new boiler would provide steam for the mill and 20 megawatts of power to the market. But there are several conditions that have to be met, including financing, permits, having a reliable supply of biomass (presumably from trees), and expanded transmission capability, the announcement said. Another Brookfield subsidiary already sells electricity into the grid from a hydroelectric dam at the Millinocket mill.
Demonstrating its intent to reopen the mill, Fraser pointed out that it is spending nearly $1 million to winterize and protect the paper machine and another $500,000 on feasibility studies.
Fraser has not indicated whether rapidly declining prices for oil and kraft pulp, which it purchases on the market, might entice it to reopen even before a biomass conversion is completed.
The company is “proposing to retrofit a large, existing oil-fired boiler with a modern biomass gasifier,” Fraser Papers Limited stated in a letter to customers. Fraser operates Katahdin's mills in Millinocket and East Millinocket; both companies are subsidiaries of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management. Fraser has previously cited the use of more than two barrels of oil per ton of paper as the major reason that Millinocket’s one machine shut down in early September.
The new boiler would provide steam for the mill and 20 megawatts of power to the market. But there are several conditions that have to be met, including financing, permits, having a reliable supply of biomass (presumably from trees), and expanded transmission capability, the announcement said. Another Brookfield subsidiary already sells electricity into the grid from a hydroelectric dam at the Millinocket mill.
Demonstrating its intent to reopen the mill, Fraser pointed out that it is spending nearly $1 million to winterize and protect the paper machine and another $500,000 on feasibility studies.
Fraser has not indicated whether rapidly declining prices for oil and kraft pulp, which it purchases on the market, might entice it to reopen even before a biomass conversion is completed.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
More on Maine and FSC
More details have come to us about the subject of "Does FSC certification help the earth?" (http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/2008/10/does-fsc-certification-help-earth.html). That describes the effort to have numerous small forestry operators in Maine receive Forest Stewardship Council certification without changing their forestry practices.
Three big makers of coated paper with mills in Maine -- NewPage, SAPPI, and Verso -- are sponsoring the effort, which is known as "landscape certification."
A Verso "Sustainability Report" says "we worked with government, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), customers and other interested stakeholders to explore opportunities to make certification of forestlands more accessible and affordable to small, private landowners. This effort, which includes identifying and evaluating landscape-scale information that can be used to satisfy the group compliance criteria of forest certification standards, will continue in 2008 with an ultimate objective of certifying 3 million new acres of forestland in the state to achieve the governor’s target of 10 million acres certified in Maine."
Three big makers of coated paper with mills in Maine -- NewPage, SAPPI, and Verso -- are sponsoring the effort, which is known as "landscape certification."
A Verso "Sustainability Report" says "we worked with government, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), customers and other interested stakeholders to explore opportunities to make certification of forestlands more accessible and affordable to small, private landowners. This effort, which includes identifying and evaluating landscape-scale information that can be used to satisfy the group compliance criteria of forest certification standards, will continue in 2008 with an ultimate objective of certifying 3 million new acres of forestland in the state to achieve the governor’s target of 10 million acres certified in Maine."
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