INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — Several months of efforts by Postal Service leaders in Crawfordsville paid off when one of the city's two daily newspapers abandoned its traditional home delivery service. They will soon rely on employees of the local post office to deliver newspapers by the U.S. mail daily to subscribers in this small Indiana town.

The Paper of Montgomery County will switch from afternoon to morning publication April 2 and will be delivered by the U.S. Postal Service. Subscribers will receive the paper along with their regular mail deliveries.

Some months ago, then Crawfordsville Post Office Officer in Charge Jeff Zachary was approached by Robert Miller, Vice President and Director of Strategic Planning and Integration, for The Paper.

"He approached me about switching delivery," said Zachary. "They were looking for a better way to get The Paper delivered. "I explained how delivery by the U.S. Postal Service could save them money," said Zachary. "At that point they knew what we could offer."

In January, Connie Flick became postmaster in Crawfordsville. While inviting the local media outlet to her installation as the new Crawfordsville Postmaster, she also made an appointment to discuss ways the Postal Service could help solve with their delivery problems.

"They came back in subsequent meetings with a plan to provide county-wide delivery through the Postal Service," said Flick.

The publication, started just over two years ago, has grown from a circulation of a couple of hundred paid subscribers to about 4,500 today.

The Paper Publisher Tim Timmons said trying to get the publication to customers in a timely and consistent manner has been a struggle. He called the switch "a great answer" to the difficulty in delivering The Paper to subscribers by the traditional method of newspaper carriers.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits 146 million homes and businesses, six days a week. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to cover its operating expenses. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $73 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.