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The Postal Service receives no taxpayer dollars for routine operations, but derives its operating revenues solely from the sale of postage, products and services. With annual revenues of $70 billion, it is the world's leading provider of mailing and delivery services, offering some of the most affordable postage rates in the world. The US Postal Service delivers nearly half of the world's mail volume, 212 billion letters, advertisements, periodicals and packages a year, and serves seven million customers each day at its 37,000 retail locations nation wide.

Contrary to popular belief, the Postal Service has no official motto. However, a number of postal buildings contain inscriptions, the most familiar of which appears on the General Post Office, New York City, 8th Avenue and 33rd Street. It reads "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

This inscription is from Herodotus describing the Persian system of mounted postal carriers, and the faithfulness with which their work was done. He mailed it around 2500 years ago intending it for the entrance of the Athens post office.

On Thursday, January 31 the Kalkaska Post Office was honored as one of the best in the nation, receiving the distinguished five star award for their service and efforts.

"You may not have faced all the perils of those Persian post riders of old, but you have proved those wrong who said that you would be out of business first by the telegraph, then by the telephone, fax and finally email. As a former substitute rural mail carrier, let me share the honor of thanking you all, on behalf of the Village of Kalkaska, and extend congratulations on receiving the Five Star Customer Service Award for excellence in customer service to the people and businesses of our community," Dan Johnson, minister of the Kalkaska Church of Christ and chaplain of the Village of Kalkaska, said as he presented the award. "The Five Star Award is for accurate delivery from our carriers to the residents of Kalkaska. We are a mystery shopped office. That means that we have to ask all of the important questions at the counter. A lot of people feel that we are kind of harassing them with questions, but we are actually doing that for the safety of the mail and the safety of the customer. By mystery shopped I mean that someone actually comes in and makes sure that we are asking all of the questions. We also are judged on wait time in line. We are not supposed to let any customer wait for over five minutes. Sometimes that can be quite challenging here as we only have the two windows. At Christmas, we opened a third window to eliminate the wait time in line, and that really helped. The third window was actually the Postmaster office. We actually put another unit in there. This award is a great morale boost for everyone here.

Everyone is very excited and very proud. This is great because really, we are the first ones looked at if something goes missing. So, something this positive is really great. This crew is extremely fond of their customers. I've been a Postmaster in four offices now. I am constantly pleased by the extra steps they will take for their customers. I'm very proud of them," said Maggie Rohring, Postmaster of the Kalkaska Post Office.

The community of Kalkaska as a whole can be quite proud of their post office as well.

"We're one of 20 in Northern Michigan to get this award. I am unsure of the number of offices that we have up here, but there are quite a few. This is quite an honor for Kalkaska," said Rohring.