Despite a national order not to reinstall letter-sorting machines that had been dismantled over the past month, the Postal Service plants in Tacoma and Wenatchee have done just that, according to workers there.

Forty percent of the letter-sorting machines in the Seattle-Tacoma area had been disconnected by Tuesday, when the Postal Service announced a halt to a nationwide machinery purge until after the November election.

“I have seen a lot of machinery that has been taken out,” Postal Service truck driver Bob Bockman of Tacoma said.

The Tacoma plant lost eight of its 18 machines that sort and postmark the mail, according to workers there. The equipment was disconnected and pushed into a corner.

“Some of that machinery is going back in!” Bockman said.

By Wednesday night, five of the machines in Tacoma had been reconnected. Parts of two others had been scavenged and incorporated into the plant’s existing machines to boost their mail-sorting capacity.

These letter-sorting machines, long as a city bus, with power cords as thick as firehoses, can be shortened or lengthened in modular fashion.

The mail-processing plant in Wenatchee has also reconnected its one recently disconnected letter sorter, according to workers there.

The two plants’ machines were revived even though the Postal Service’s head of maintenance, Kevin Couch, had ordered plants nationwide on Tuesday evening not to do so […]