Oregon Public Broadcasting

Deep snow across Oregon is proving to be a challenge for those real life Santas trying to deliver mail and packages in time for Christmas.  Pete Springer reports.

"Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, nor hail..." – wait—scratch that part about snow.

Many people and businesses in the Portland-area haven’t had a mail delivery in days. 

Ron Anderson is a spokesman for the Postal Service in Portland.

He says mail carriers were able to deliver eighty-four percent of the mail statewide on Monday, and they’re working hard to restore that to one-hundred percent.

But Anderson says snow is blocking a lot of curbside mail boxes.

Ron Anderson: “We’re also seeing some of that in the side streets when we get off into the neighborhoods where we’re delivering to residential addresses, same kind of thing.  Snow drifts, vehicles that have been snowed in and aren’t moveable actually blocking the mail boxes that we can’t get to.”

Other package delivery services such as Fed-Ex and UPS are facing similar problems.

Snowy roads are slowing them down.