From the end of April, five itinerant post office trucks will roam the rural areas of France, the postal group announced this Thursday in the columns of
Ouest-France
.
Under the aegis of the Banque des Territoires, this initiative extends over a year of experimentation, with the aim of strengthening the postal presence in five French rural departments (Gers, Haute-Marne, Orne, Creuse and Jura), offering thus half a day of service each week per municipality.
Forty municipalities and 13,000 inhabitants
This approach aims to meet the imperative of La Poste, which is committed to ensuring a postal presence within five kilometers or twenty minutes by car for 90% of the French population. Although this objective is generally achieved at the national level (97%), significant disparities persist between departments. Thus, certain territories such as the inner suburbs of Paris or the overseas departments benefit from 100% postal coverage, while others, such as Gers or Haute-Marne, show much lower figures.
As part of this initiative, these five office trucks will serve forty different municipalities, representing approximately 13,000 inhabitants. They will offer a full range of postal services as well as those of France Services, including services such as administrative procedures, mobile telephony, and banking services from the Postal Bank. Rather than reopening traditional post offices, this mobile approach would make it possible to effectively reach sparsely populated areas, where the permanent installation of a post office would be unviable, the postal group indicates to our colleagues.
With this approach, La Poste is reactivating the concept of the old yellow vans from the 1960s and 1970s.