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In December 2025 the United States Postal Service (USPS) made changes to its postmarking practices. The change is in the scheduling of the transportation of mail to the processing/distribution facilities which could cause delays in mail arriving at main facilities.
For San Benito County post offices, the processing/distribution facility is the main post office in San Jose. According to the San Juan Bautista Post Office, mail delivery will continue to happen for its service area the same or next day and the county should not see any changes.
For rural residents, mail moves slower because mail goes to Hollister before going to San Jose. Paicines and Tres Pinos post office mail is delivered to Hollister at closing.
However, all post offices offer postmarking to customers who go to the counter and ask to have their mail date stamped. Same-day postmarks are important for tax returns and voter ballots. USPS assures that customer postmarks can be “applied to his or her mailpiece and that the date on the postmark matches the date of mailing, by visiting a Postal Service retail location and requesting a manual (local) postmark at the retail counter when tendering their mailpiece.”
If mail is dropped in a mailbox or picked up by a mail carrier, it might not be postmarked that same day.
The following information is from the USPS website:
MYTH: How the Postal Service applies postmarks is changing.
FACT: The Postal Service has not changed and is not changing our postmarking practices, which have been consistent since we began moving away from hand-canceling every item at Post Offices decades ago. Postmarks are generally applied by machines at our originating processing facilities and will continue to be applied at those facilities in the same manner and to the same extent as before. Postmarks applied at those facilities will continue to contain the name or location of the facility that applied the postmark and the date on which the first automated processing operation was performed on that mailpiece.
While we are not changing our postmarking practices, we have made adjustments to our transportation operations that will result in some mailpieces not arriving at our originating processing facilities on the same day that they are mailed.
This means that the date on the postmarks applied at our processing facilities will not necessarily match the date on which the customer’s mailpiece was collected by a letter carrier or dropped off at a retail location.
As before, a customer can ensure that a postmark is applied to his or her mailpiece, and that the date on the postmark matches the date of mailing, by visiting a Postal Service retail location and requesting a manual (local) postmark at the retail counter when tendering their mailpiece. Manual postmarks will be applied free of charge.
This guidance is the same for all types of mailpieces, including mail-in ballots.
Customers with additional questions about mail-in ballots can visit our Election Mail website: usps.com/voterinfo.
San Juan Bautista verified that customers who want their mail postmarked can go to the post office counter. Rural post offices will also postmark at the counter. The Paicines Post Office advises people to mail several days ahead of the due date as a precaution because other factors such as road closures can also delay mail reaching San Jose.
Tres Pinos Post Office hours:
Mon-Fri. 9 am to Noon; 1 to 4 pm. Closed Saturday and Sunday.
Mail sent to Hollister at 4 p.m.
Paicines Post Office hours:
Mon-Fri 8:30 to Noon; 12:30 pm to 3:30 pm. Closed Saturday and Sunday.
Mail sent to Hollister at 3:30 p.m.
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