BARROW -- Mike Shults pushed an empty grocery cart down a chilly aisle at the largest grocery store in town.
"Empty shelves," he said, gesturing to the ice cream section.
"Empty shelves," he said, rolling his eyes at a few bags of frozen vegetables.
He slapped a DiGiorno pizza into the basket for dinner.
"Geesh! It's a joke!"
Life was never easy on the North Slope, where ground fog rolls off the Arctic Ocean and blizzards strike even in summer. But it got harder in June, grumble residents in this Inupiaq village of 4,200.
That's when, to save money, the U.S. Postal Service decided to change how bypass mail gets to Barrow.
Designed to assist residents in Alaska's poor, isolated villages, the program subsidizes bulk-mail delivery. The postal service program loses more than $50 million a year to run it, an official said.
Under the program, goods essentially travel first-class at parcel-post rates -- quickly and cheaply. Rural Alaskans have taken advantage of bypass mail to lower costs for everything from soda pop to auto parts to dog food.
Bypass is usually a pallet of groceries -- weighing 1,000 pounds or more -- sent directly from a store or other businesses to a private transporter for delivery, such as Alaska Airlines. The bulk shipment bypasses the post office -- hence the program's name.
Bypass mail is widely popular in the Bush. The reform adopted in June affects just the North Slope. That's because unlike most of the rest of rural Alaska, there's a road from the state's cities to the Slope. Although the road goes only to the oil fields, not to villages, the mail can get part way to Barrow via truck.
Before the change last summer, airlines flew bypass mail from Fairbanks to Barrow, a 500-mile trip.
Now, a trucking company drives the mail from Fairbanks to Deadhorse, an industrial town next to the huge Prudhoe Bay oil field. From there, airlines fly the mailed goods to Barrow, a 200-mile trip.
The new system has created a cascade of changes. Officials with airlines, the main grocery store and the borough government say they're struggling to adjust.
Residents, besides knocking delays in mail service that they blame for everything from wilted lettuce and browned meat, also complain that it's much harder to book seats. That's because Deadhorse became a stop on Alaska Airlines' flights to and from Barrow. That has increased competition for tickets, residents say.
An Alaska Airlines official said the company is working with the community to address that issue, including recent steps to improve passenger service.
Steve Deaton, the postal service's coordinator for the bypass-mail change, said some bypass mail has taken a day longer to arrive than it used to. But the program works, he said. Customers pay for mail that arrives in seven to 10 days, and that's the latest it arrives, he said.
He's heard from residents in the region that perishables are reaching Barrow in better shape than they used to. They're trucked to Deadhorse in a temperature-controlled van, giving them some protection they didn't have before, he said.
The postal service is saving money too, about $1.3 million a year, he said. That's because the postal service pays transporters about five times less to ship mail overland instead of by air, he said.
"It works from a cost-savings standpoint and it works from a customer-service standpoint," he said last week.
The postal service has received less than 10 complaints, he said. They weren't caused by the new ground-shipping system, but were air carrier mistakes, such as mail delivered to the wrong destination, he said.
Alaska Airlines, Everts Air Cargo and Northern Air Cargo are the three carriers flying Barrow's bypass mail. Officials with those companies said the new system is costlier and problematic, in part because of an increase in diverted flights.
Blizzards, fog or low clouds often shroud North Slope airports, reducing visibility and preventing planes from retrieving mail in Deadhorse or dropping it off in Barrow, said Robert Ragar of Everts.
"It happens several times a week easy," Ragar said.
The carriers are also getting paid less for flying the same distance to deliver mail, since planes still usually depart from Fairbanks.
Bypass mail delivery was much timelier before, Ragar said, because planes loaded the mail at Fairbanks, where bad weather rarely prevents landings.
"We have spent an enormous amount of money and resources messing with the different weather patterns between Deadhorse and Barrow," Ragar said.
During a foggy stretch in late August, 55,000 pounds of bypass mail were trapped in Deadhorse, said Doug Ruckle, Barrow store manager with Alaska Commercial Co.
Ruckle stood near empty shelves containing the last carton of eggs.
During an interview, a man in the milk section shouted: "You guys don't have half gallons!"
"It's coming tonight," Ruckle responded, shaking his head.
The store had been bread-less for two or three days, he said. Angry customers had called his house, he said.
"It's been a bad week," he said, as a lady wearing a skin parka grabbed the last eggs and ambled off.
Margaret Ahngasuk, an elementary school teacher leaving the store, said some people still live off traditional foods like whale and caribou. But people need modern foods too, to balance nutritional needs.
The store has been out of wheat bread, she said, so she's baking bread at home.
After the change, fruits and vegetables were more likely to go bad before customers could buy them, so Alaska Commercial now flies them special delivery from Anchorage and Seattle, logistics manager Michelle Adams said.
That doubled the shipping costs for those products, she said.
It's difficult to plan now, she said. The store goes several days without a shipment, then suddenly must process several tons, she said. The stock disappears quickly.
"When it does come in (customers) wipe the store clean because they don't know when the store will have another shipment," she said.
Barrow resident Marvin Olson said it's harder to get seats on Alaska Airlines flights. The airline added two flights a week to Barrow, but that hasn't helped, he said, because locals compete for seats with oil field workers on flights that now stop in Deadhorse.
Oil field employees work regular rotations and can reserve seats months in advance, he said.
Kicking luggage forward in the small Barrow terminal in August -- ground fog had kept the plane from landing the night before -- Olson said contractors or borough employees now have difficulty making reservations. If they're bumped, say for weather, they often must wait several days for a flight because seats are often booked. That can cost the borough hundreds of dollars a day.
"The post office shifted this burden onto the people of the North Slope," Olson said.
Matt Yerbic, cargo managing director for Alaska Airlines, said the bypass mail change forced the company to combine Barrow and Deadhorse passengers. The airline had to cover the loss in postal service income and the extra cost of canceled flights, he said.
The airline began flying planes with more passenger capacity into Barrow last week, he said.
That will help passenger traffic flow better, he said.
He wished the bypass change had not been made because it's adversely affected North Slope residents, he said.
"Time will tell if we can effectively work our way through it," he said.
Deaton said there are no plans to reverse the decision.
"We have no data to suggest it needs to be reversed," he said.
Daily News reporter Alex deMarban can be reached at ademarban@adn.com or 257-4310.
