Parcelforce

Parcelforce national sorting lines, December 2018

You may remember that a year or more ago I was selling dad's collection of post office-related ephemera. There's still a single box of it left, looking dolefully at me in my office whenever I allow it to enter my conscious field of vision. Most of the time, thankfully, it remains invisible.

Anyway, I received a significant amount of help in the valuation and auctioning from Jeremy, the Secretary of the Postal Mechanisation Study Circle - a group that really does what its title suggests. I had no idea how much interest there is in postal mechanisation until coming into contact with these chaps, although without parcels I can foresee the demise of the group as I can't imagine anyone from the email generation having the slightest interest in the idea of paper being sent physically from one place to another just for the purpose of communicating.

Mum receives the PMSC newsletter (ironically by email) and forwarded me an issue that mentioned a proposed visit to the Parcelforce site in Coventry, which is on my route to and from work. Knowing that the visit would only go ahead if enough interest was shown, I threw my hat in the ring to support the group and try to ensure that it would take place. And because I like going to interesting places, and this certainly looked interesting.

International sorting lines

There were only four of us in the end, so it was a good thing I volunteered. Our hosts had worked as engineers within Parcelforce for decades and were so enthusiastic that they had been the ones to reach out and contact the PMSC, not the other way round. We were given a brief Powerpoint presentation with the history of and introduction to the service and the site - the largest in the country, handling both national and international mail. Although Coventry airport is on the other side of the fence around the site it is no longer used for international parcel distribution, which is taken by road to and from other airports around the country.

We were all kitted out in steel toecapped boots and reflective jackets before going out to the buildings housing the sorting machinery. While the building and the conveyors for the national parcel mail were huge and impressive, the international depot was much more interesting. Both sites use really fast raised conveyors passing through an arch which reads the routing barcode on five out of the six sides of the box, and tips the parcel automatically down the correct chute for its destination.

The other PMSC visitors asked esoteric questions about the machinery and the software and the routing barcodes and labels, while I asked what happens when the machines break down, and what sort of contraband they discover. One of the people showing us round told the story of how much of the machine was destroyed when a parcel was misplaced, and how quickly it had to be repaired and replaced to avoid holding up the mail. He also had a picture on his phone of all the guns which had been discovered in international mail in one week - they filled a large table.

So an interesting trip to a place that I wouldn't have imagined visiting ordinarily, all thanks to dad's interest in Postal Mechanisation. Now I have to deal with that last box...