10 ms·

USPS sees $8.5 billion loss, warns Congress it'll be broke by 2011

55 points by percept 16y ago

muerdeme 16y ago
I suspect the board of governors got sick of dealing with the escalating costs of labor (fixed in arbitration with unions) and had to figure out a way to really get Congress' attention once and for all. They are warning about impending bankruptcy without even trying some of the drastic measures they had toyed with, i.e. no Saturday delivery. Those measures only would have delayed the inevitable, but this still smells to me like the leaders are sick of Congress passing the buck.
- cosmicray 16y ago
  If the USPS dropped Saturday, it will have little effect on the back office side of business. Pretty much the mail volume will remain unchanged. The same number of printed bills will be handled, the same number of greeting cards, the same number of standard mail (what used to be called 3rd class or bulk/junk), and pretty much the same number of packages. Due to the human interface issues, USPS will still have to maintain some semblance of Saturday retail window hours. In the small town where I live, retail hours have already been trimmed somewhat. Removing Saturday delivery will save in manpower, and reimbursements for milage. To the best of my knowledge, rural carriers only work 5 days a week. So the 6th day (regardless of which day it is) is filled in via a substitute carrier. Those subs could see a drastic drop in hours of work. But back to my original comment about back office operations... If you dumped Saturday, all the mail that would have been sorted on Saturday morning, will still be sitting there on Monday morning, waiting to be handled. There may be savings here, but don't expect it to remove 1/6th the operating costs of the USPS.
  - HectorRamos 16y ago
    USPS works 24/7 actually (my girlfriend works in one of their regional sorting facilities). Mail is sorted throughout the whole week, if anything we might see less hours being worked by the sorters on Thursday and Friday when the Saturday deliveries are sorted out. Keep in mind only Saturday delivery is being suggested to be dropped out, that's the end-of-the-line. You still have to sort at all kinds of upper levels (does this piece go to a zipcode within this state, or one of our territories, USVI, etc? And so on, until they get to the local USPS PO, which is the one which would handle the local Saturday delivery). (Not that this disputes anything you said, just pointing out that mail will probably still be sorted the same way its being done right now)
fleitz 16y ago
"Congress has an obligation to ensure that effective solutions are implemented and taxpayers don't get stuck paying for a bailout," I wonder where Issa was when bailing out the banks for $2 trillion.
- watchandwait 16y ago
  Issa voted against TARP http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll681.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll681.xml
  - jbooth 16y ago
    Only because it was clear enough people were voting for it that he could pretend to stick to his principles. You think if it came down to him, he'd actually vote for total financial collapse?
    - watchandwait 16y ago
      Wrong. He also voted against it the first time in the House, when the bill did go down and the Dow dropped 700 points. Plus, the "total collapse" argument was BS. We'd be further along if the feds had allowed the banks to fail (while protecting individual depositors) and reorganized them. We did it this way with the RTC in the 1980s and Sweden did it in the 1990s.
      - jbooth 16y ago
        Eh, maybe, although I kinda doubt it, there's an assumption to think that because we didn't have a collapse, there was no danger of one. Vanishing 1/3 of the banking industry overnight without an organized wind-down would likely have led to disaster even in retrospect. In the moment? Anyone who voted against that bill was either posturing or a madman. I mean, we got the money back anyways, most of it. Why play chicken?
        hrabago 16y ago
phillijw 16y ago
USPS has become irrelevant
- kiba 16y ago
  Quick! Let start a subversive private mail company, like Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company. His company literally compete with the USPS for business until it was shut down by the governmenet's lawyering. He succeeded in driving down the cost of government mail.
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    Instead, UPS and FedEx have taken the high-margin segment, leaving the low margin stuff for the USPS. Also, much of what Lysander Spooner's company was great for is now covered by email and other Internet apps. (IIRC, an attraction was that intra-city mail was delivered quickly.)
  - jberryman 16y ago
    WASTE
- glhaynes 16y ago
  My immediate gut-reaction toward this kind of statement is negative: do we really want to have private companies in charge of all mail in the US? And no doubt there are some people who rely on it and wouldn't get acceptable service (due to remoteness, etc) from a private company. Etc. BUT: the vast majority of the mail I get through the postal service is junk mail that I don't want. The remainder is almost entirely stuff that I'd prefer to get electronically and, if the USPS were to disappear, I feel confident I would. So I'd like to hear arguments for the continuing subsidy and existence of the USPS, but I wouldn't personally cry any tears if it were abolished tomorrow.
  - cosmicray 16y ago
    > BUT: the vast majority of the mail I get through the postal service is junk mail that I don't want. The remainder is almost entirely stuff that I'd prefer to get electronically and, if the USPS were to disappear, I feel confident I would. The answer to that has to do with economic issues. Once upon a time (and I have not seen the numbers in years) 3rd class mail (what you can junk, and is now officially called Standard) actually carried its own way, and supported the cost-basis for First Class mail. The reason(s) were varied, but had to do with the number of times a piece of mail had to be handled/sorted. Properly prepared Standard mail, had to be individually handled less than 2 times. Much of it was handled once (by the letter carrier). Standard mail arrives at the USPS dropoff already is pre-sorted by carrier route, and potentially by carrier order of travel. The mailers get a reduced rate, but not as much as it actually saves the USPS. Getting rid of Standard Mail would actually increase cost of First Class. Standard Mail is advertising, and if they didn't advertise to you one way, they would just do it another. My beef is less with Standard Mail, and more with political mail. > So I'd like to hear arguments for the continuing subsidy and existence of the USPS, but I wouldn't personally cry any tears if it were abolished tomorrow. USPS delivers (in one way or the other) to every point of presence in the USA. UPS, FedEx and DHL can not match that (although they do try to come close). USPS also provides a variety of services that none of the others do.
waterlesscloud 16y ago
Raise the rates on bulk mail. There's so much of it that it's clearly priced too low.
- eli 16y ago
  I was under the impression that bulk rates subsidize artificially low first class rates.
  - glhaynes 16y ago
    So let's let them subsidize first class rates further!
bluedevil2k 16y ago
If you think about the USPS as an independent corporation, it would be crazy to think about these results: a government approved monopoly, massive tax-shields (no business income tax, no property tax on post offices). Then, you contrast that with their one big weakness - they can't set their own prices. Congress sets the postage rates. Talk about an incredibly inefficient way to run a business - seems a great counterpoint to anyone who thinks government should be more involved with business. Here's a quick and drastic solution to the USPS problem. 1) Give them the ability to set their own prices. They have competition in the form of UPS and FedEx for large packages delivered to your door. Chances are those prices wouldn't change. The rate for a stamp would potentially double. Is that a bad thing? Seriously, what percentage of the stuff you get in the mail is actually useful? 10%? 5%? Yes, there are some businesses who depend on cheap mail, but in effect the US taxpayer is subsidizing their business then. It's no different than the US bailing out the car companies in that regard. This price increase would probably decrease mail volume considerably. 2) Reduce delivery to 3 days a week. Would anyone complain about this? How many people even check their mail every single day without fail? Again, this may hurt mail-based businesses, but they are already existing in an artificial business environment skewed by government subsidies. Going from 6 days to 3 wouldn't cut costs 50%, but I think 20-25% cut in costs is reasonable to expect, considering the volume decrease. These two things would quickly make the USPS profitable. As everyone here has pointed out, it's not 1980 any more. There's better way to transmit information from one person to another.
- madaxe 16y ago
  Very well put - and it'd have the additional bonus of increasing interest in non-physical informational transit (i.e. the internet) for urgent documents (and perhaps even help instantiate a shift away from things such as paper contracts), further aiding growth in the tech sector. The future of the postal industry lies in the transit of physical goods - if they want to survive, they need to become very efficient at moving parcels and packages, and forget about the fiddly business of letters and bulk mail.
- baddox 16y ago
  I don't think the junk mail that takes up the majority of your inbox costs the price of a stamp to send. Surely bulk mail like that is much, much cheaper.
grandalf 16y ago
I get such little useful content from my mailbox that I only empty it when it's become completely full (about once every 10 days). I'd be totally happy with weekly mail delivery, which would cut costs substantially. Most of what is in the box is direct mail advertising that I've tried very hard to opt out of and which goes directly into the garbage. What remains is duplicate copies of bills I get online and tons of junk from Wells Fargo, etc. I think the USPS has become more of an advertising distribution service than something of value to the typical person. And, USPS doesn't attempt repeated delivery of parcels, so 80% of the time I'm not home to receive it and have to drive to the post office and stand in line to collect it. Daily mail delivery would make sense if you could count on things being delivered with day level precision, but in my experience all mail that isn't coming from the same city or adjacent cities is wildly unpredictable.
- ams6110 16y ago
  I process my paper mail once a month, when I pay bills. I do empty the box more often than that but I just put it in a pile, discarding obvious junk immediately but opening nothing. I find this to be the most efficient approach.
  - grandalf 16y ago
    That's my approach too. Most of it never gets opened, but once in a while I'm fooled by an official looking envelope.
ck2 16y ago
I've read that many employees retire early with full benefits and then get their buddies to hire them back as contractors for even higher pay while getting benefits. Your delivery person may be making over $100k with full benefits. Their executives are even more corrupt: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/26/AR2010092603359.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/17/in-hard-times-postmaster-earned-800000-in-pay-perk/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/17/in-hard-time... Maybe they need an "auto-industry" style reset. (and bulk rate definitely needs a 50% increase)
jared314 16y ago
Earth Class Mail had a good idea. Why not imitate that?
rick888 16y ago
wow, a government run program out of money? What a surprise (:-O <= this is my shocked face). The problem is that they aren't running it like a corporation, because they feel they have a monopoly. As an example, a few summers ago, the USPS internet gateway went down. It took them over a month to get it back up and running properly. For over a month, anyone running a website could not get correct rates (If it could connect to the servers at all). If this was a private company, they would have lost a ton of customers.
tocomment 16y ago
Start delivering mail only two or three days a week. That's all anyone reall needs. If nothing else cut out Satirday at least. And charge whatever you need to. It's not like mail is some kind of necisoty that needs to be kept cheap. Sent from first generation iPhone sorry for the typos.
- racecar789 16y ago
  Mail needs to be delivered daily (preferably seven days a week). Economic transaction efficiency depends on the mail. Many invoices, payments, legal documents etc are still sent through the mail (even though they should be electronic).
  - X-Istence 16y ago
    The banks don't process any of my payments on the weekends, so bills and invoices don't matter if they arrive on the weekends. Saturday and Sunday thus are not required. As for legal documents, those are all based on the standard work week as well, so that argument falls as well. As such there is no reason for mail to be delivered on Saturday or Sunday. At the company I work at we get mail on Saturday, we don't get to read it until Monday anyway.
    - webgambit 16y ago
      > As for legal documents, those are all based on the standard work week as well, so that argument falls as well. No, it doesn't. Quite a few legal documents are signed on Saturdays and then overnighted back so that the sender can have it back by Monday.
  - chrisbolt 16y ago
    The USPS could offer a way of electronically delivering mail to them which could be sent over the internet then printed (by the USPS) at the nearest sorting center. Who says things that need to be on paper have to start out that way?
tumult 16y ago
There is a man whose job is to each day enter my property and deposit garbage into a receptacle, which I am then legally obliged to dispose of. He is the mail man.
- jacoblyles 16y ago
  I contend that the USPS is the world's largest legal spam operation.
  - simonsarris 16y ago
    I don't see why its okay to be so derisive of the USPS. By your token, http is the internet's largest spam operation
    - jacoblyles 16y ago
      Difference is, what percent of revenue for the internet comes from spam? Spam is the USPS's bread and butter. I receive mail from the USPS every day. Only about 10 times per year is there something relevant to my interests.
drallison 16y ago
A modest proposal: perhaps the USPS should reassert the constitutional postal monopoly and recover the highly profitable urgent letter and package business from FedEx and UPS.
- mindcrime 16y ago
  A less modest, but more practical proposal: remove the USPS's monopoly protection and make it compete on the market alongside private carriers. Let the best business(es) win.
  - drallison 16y ago
    What do you believe would happen it FedEx and UPS (and who ever else wanted) needed to provide regular first class mail delivery and other letter services to every postal address in the United States for, say, $0.44/ounce in return for a license to deliver urgent mail and packages?
jwhitlark 16y ago
Years ago, the USPS proposed to give everyone that had an address an email account, for receipt and payment of bills. Then they priced it at the cost of two first class stamps. The program died, and we lost what might have been a vaulable piece of new infrastructure.
- iamgoat 16y ago
  Time to retry this program. Every year that passes is a better opportunity for the postal service. More people are online and many businesses have paperless statement options. Less important letter mail is being delivered. I would pay not to have to check my physical mailbox but once a month. Next up, get rid of yellow pages.
mkramlich 16y ago
solution: some permutation of raising prices or reducing costs. next story :)
utefan001 16y ago
My friend who is a USPS contractor says management wants to cut costs by eliminating Saturday delivery, but the politicians don't have the balls to approve it. They are only worried about getting re-elected.
util 16y ago
Does the dip in NFLX around noon EST correspond to this? http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:NFLX http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:NFLX
brianobush 16y ago
considering I haven't checked my (physical) mailbox for two days now, I wonder the effectiveness and necessity of the service. I know many people that do depend on their services, but I think the USPS will become a thing of the past eventually.
chrisbennet 16y ago
I think the USPS is importance lies in that they serve a section of the market that wouldn't be served otherwise. Their charter probably requires that they deliver mail to rural areas i.e. unprofitable ones. If you really wanted them to be competitive you would allow them to ditch their "unprofitable" routes (sorry Alaska) and fund their retirements like Fedex and UPS. As an aside, it does seem that they are "ad supported" to a certain extent.

55 points by percept 16y ago

I suspect the board of governors got sick of dealing with the escalating costs of labor (fixed in arbitration with unions) and had to figure out a way to really get Congress' attention once and for all. They are warning about impending bankruptcy without even trying some of the drastic measures they had toyed with, i.e. no Saturday delivery. Those measures only would have delayed the inevitable, but this still smells to me like the leaders are sick of Congress passing the buck.

cosmicray 16y ago
If the USPS dropped Saturday, it will have little effect on the back office side of business. Pretty much the mail volume will remain unchanged. The same number of printed bills will be handled, the same number of greeting cards, the same number of standard mail (what used to be called 3rd class or bulk/junk), and pretty much the same number of packages. Due to the human interface issues, USPS will still have to maintain some semblance of Saturday retail window hours. In the small town where I live, retail hours have already been trimmed somewhat. Removing Saturday delivery will save in manpower, and reimbursements for milage. To the best of my knowledge, rural carriers only work 5 days a week. So the 6th day (regardless of which day it is) is filled in via a substitute carrier. Those subs could see a drastic drop in hours of work. But back to my original comment about back office operations... If you dumped Saturday, all the mail that would have been sorted on Saturday morning, will still be sitting there on Monday morning, waiting to be handled. There may be savings here, but don't expect it to remove 1/6th the operating costs of the USPS.
- HectorRamos 16y ago
  USPS works 24/7 actually (my girlfriend works in one of their regional sorting facilities). Mail is sorted throughout the whole week, if anything we might see less hours being worked by the sorters on Thursday and Friday when the Saturday deliveries are sorted out. Keep in mind only Saturday delivery is being suggested to be dropped out, that's the end-of-the-line. You still have to sort at all kinds of upper levels (does this piece go to a zipcode within this state, or one of our territories, USVI, etc? And so on, until they get to the local USPS PO, which is the one which would handle the local Saturday delivery). (Not that this disputes anything you said, just pointing out that mail will probably still be sorted the same way its being done right now)

fleitz 16y ago

"Congress has an obligation to ensure that effective solutions are implemented and taxpayers don't get stuck paying for a bailout," I wonder where Issa was when bailing out the banks for $2 trillion.

watchandwait 16y ago
Issa voted against TARP http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll681.xml http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll681.xml
- jbooth 16y ago
  Only because it was clear enough people were voting for it that he could pretend to stick to his principles. You think if it came down to him, he'd actually vote for total financial collapse?
  - watchandwait 16y ago
    Wrong. He also voted against it the first time in the House, when the bill did go down and the Dow dropped 700 points. Plus, the "total collapse" argument was BS. We'd be further along if the feds had allowed the banks to fail (while protecting individual depositors) and reorganized them. We did it this way with the RTC in the 1980s and Sweden did it in the 1990s.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      Eh, maybe, although I kinda doubt it, there's an assumption to think that because we didn't have a collapse, there was no danger of one. Vanishing 1/3 of the banking industry overnight without an organized wind-down would likely have led to disaster even in retrospect. In the moment? Anyone who voted against that bill was either posturing or a madman. I mean, we got the money back anyways, most of it. Why play chicken?
      - hrabago 16y ago

phillijw 16y ago

USPS has become irrelevant

kiba 16y ago
Quick! Let start a subversive private mail company, like Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company. His company literally compete with the USPS for business until it was shut down by the governmenet's lawyering. He succeeded in driving down the cost of government mail.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  Instead, UPS and FedEx have taken the high-margin segment, leaving the low margin stuff for the USPS. Also, much of what Lysander Spooner's company was great for is now covered by email and other Internet apps. (IIRC, an attraction was that intra-city mail was delivered quickly.)
- jberryman 16y ago
  WASTE
glhaynes 16y ago
My immediate gut-reaction toward this kind of statement is negative: do we really want to have private companies in charge of all mail in the US? And no doubt there are some people who rely on it and wouldn't get acceptable service (due to remoteness, etc) from a private company. Etc. BUT: the vast majority of the mail I get through the postal service is junk mail that I don't want. The remainder is almost entirely stuff that I'd prefer to get electronically and, if the USPS were to disappear, I feel confident I would. So I'd like to hear arguments for the continuing subsidy and existence of the USPS, but I wouldn't personally cry any tears if it were abolished tomorrow.
- cosmicray 16y ago
  > BUT: the vast majority of the mail I get through the postal service is junk mail that I don't want. The remainder is almost entirely stuff that I'd prefer to get electronically and, if the USPS were to disappear, I feel confident I would. The answer to that has to do with economic issues. Once upon a time (and I have not seen the numbers in years) 3rd class mail (what you can junk, and is now officially called Standard) actually carried its own way, and supported the cost-basis for First Class mail. The reason(s) were varied, but had to do with the number of times a piece of mail had to be handled/sorted. Properly prepared Standard mail, had to be individually handled less than 2 times. Much of it was handled once (by the letter carrier). Standard mail arrives at the USPS dropoff already is pre-sorted by carrier route, and potentially by carrier order of travel. The mailers get a reduced rate, but not as much as it actually saves the USPS. Getting rid of Standard Mail would actually increase cost of First Class. Standard Mail is advertising, and if they didn't advertise to you one way, they would just do it another. My beef is less with Standard Mail, and more with political mail. > So I'd like to hear arguments for the continuing subsidy and existence of the USPS, but I wouldn't personally cry any tears if it were abolished tomorrow. USPS delivers (in one way or the other) to every point of presence in the USA. UPS, FedEx and DHL can not match that (although they do try to come close). USPS also provides a variety of services that none of the others do.

waterlesscloud 16y ago

Raise the rates on bulk mail. There's so much of it that it's clearly priced too low.

eli 16y ago
I was under the impression that bulk rates subsidize artificially low first class rates.
- glhaynes 16y ago
  So let's let them subsidize first class rates further!

bluedevil2k 16y ago

If you think about the USPS as an independent corporation, it would be crazy to think about these results: a government approved monopoly, massive tax-shields (no business income tax, no property tax on post offices). Then, you contrast that with their one big weakness - they can't set their own prices. Congress sets the postage rates. Talk about an incredibly inefficient way to run a business - seems a great counterpoint to anyone who thinks government should be more involved with business. Here's a quick and drastic solution to the USPS problem. 1) Give them the ability to set their own prices. They have competition in the form of UPS and FedEx for large packages delivered to your door. Chances are those prices wouldn't change. The rate for a stamp would potentially double. Is that a bad thing? Seriously, what percentage of the stuff you get in the mail is actually useful? 10%? 5%? Yes, there are some businesses who depend on cheap mail, but in effect the US taxpayer is subsidizing their business then. It's no different than the US bailing out the car companies in that regard. This price increase would probably decrease mail volume considerably. 2) Reduce delivery to 3 days a week. Would anyone complain about this? How many people even check their mail every single day without fail? Again, this may hurt mail-based businesses, but they are already existing in an artificial business environment skewed by government subsidies. Going from 6 days to 3 wouldn't cut costs 50%, but I think 20-25% cut in costs is reasonable to expect, considering the volume decrease. These two things would quickly make the USPS profitable. As everyone here has pointed out, it's not 1980 any more. There's better way to transmit information from one person to another.

madaxe 16y ago
Very well put - and it'd have the additional bonus of increasing interest in non-physical informational transit (i.e. the internet) for urgent documents (and perhaps even help instantiate a shift away from things such as paper contracts), further aiding growth in the tech sector. The future of the postal industry lies in the transit of physical goods - if they want to survive, they need to become very efficient at moving parcels and packages, and forget about the fiddly business of letters and bulk mail.
baddox 16y ago
I don't think the junk mail that takes up the majority of your inbox costs the price of a stamp to send. Surely bulk mail like that is much, much cheaper.

grandalf 16y ago

I get such little useful content from my mailbox that I only empty it when it's become completely full (about once every 10 days). I'd be totally happy with weekly mail delivery, which would cut costs substantially. Most of what is in the box is direct mail advertising that I've tried very hard to opt out of and which goes directly into the garbage. What remains is duplicate copies of bills I get online and tons of junk from Wells Fargo, etc. I think the USPS has become more of an advertising distribution service than something of value to the typical person. And, USPS doesn't attempt repeated delivery of parcels, so 80% of the time I'm not home to receive it and have to drive to the post office and stand in line to collect it. Daily mail delivery would make sense if you could count on things being delivered with day level precision, but in my experience all mail that isn't coming from the same city or adjacent cities is wildly unpredictable.

ams6110 16y ago
I process my paper mail once a month, when I pay bills. I do empty the box more often than that but I just put it in a pile, discarding obvious junk immediately but opening nothing. I find this to be the most efficient approach.
- grandalf 16y ago
  That's my approach too. Most of it never gets opened, but once in a while I'm fooled by an official looking envelope.

ck2 16y ago

I've read that many employees retire early with full benefits and then get their buddies to hire them back as contractors for even higher pay while getting benefits. Your delivery person may be making over $100k with full benefits. Their executives are even more corrupt: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/26/AR2010092603359.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09... http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/17/in-hard-times-postmaster-earned-800000-in-pay-perk/ http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/feb/17/in-hard-time... Maybe they need an "auto-industry" style reset. (and bulk rate definitely needs a 50% increase)

jared314 16y ago

Earth Class Mail had a good idea. Why not imitate that?

rick888 16y ago

wow, a government run program out of money? What a surprise (:-O <= this is my shocked face). The problem is that they aren't running it like a corporation, because they feel they have a monopoly. As an example, a few summers ago, the USPS internet gateway went down. It took them over a month to get it back up and running properly. For over a month, anyone running a website could not get correct rates (If it could connect to the servers at all). If this was a private company, they would have lost a ton of customers.

tocomment 16y ago

Start delivering mail only two or three days a week. That's all anyone reall needs. If nothing else cut out Satirday at least. And charge whatever you need to. It's not like mail is some kind of necisoty that needs to be kept cheap. Sent from first generation iPhone sorry for the typos.

racecar789 16y ago
Mail needs to be delivered daily (preferably seven days a week). Economic transaction efficiency depends on the mail. Many invoices, payments, legal documents etc are still sent through the mail (even though they should be electronic).
- X-Istence 16y ago
  The banks don't process any of my payments on the weekends, so bills and invoices don't matter if they arrive on the weekends. Saturday and Sunday thus are not required. As for legal documents, those are all based on the standard work week as well, so that argument falls as well. As such there is no reason for mail to be delivered on Saturday or Sunday. At the company I work at we get mail on Saturday, we don't get to read it until Monday anyway.
  - webgambit 16y ago
    > As for legal documents, those are all based on the standard work week as well, so that argument falls as well. No, it doesn't. Quite a few legal documents are signed on Saturdays and then overnighted back so that the sender can have it back by Monday.
- chrisbolt 16y ago
  The USPS could offer a way of electronically delivering mail to them which could be sent over the internet then printed (by the USPS) at the nearest sorting center. Who says things that need to be on paper have to start out that way?

tumult 16y ago

There is a man whose job is to each day enter my property and deposit garbage into a receptacle, which I am then legally obliged to dispose of. He is the mail man.

jacoblyles 16y ago
I contend that the USPS is the world's largest legal spam operation.
- simonsarris 16y ago
  I don't see why its okay to be so derisive of the USPS. By your token, http is the internet's largest spam operation
  - jacoblyles 16y ago
    Difference is, what percent of revenue for the internet comes from spam? Spam is the USPS's bread and butter. I receive mail from the USPS every day. Only about 10 times per year is there something relevant to my interests.

drallison 16y ago

A modest proposal: perhaps the USPS should reassert the constitutional postal monopoly and recover the highly profitable urgent letter and package business from FedEx and UPS.

mindcrime 16y ago
A less modest, but more practical proposal: remove the USPS's monopoly protection and make it compete on the market alongside private carriers. Let the best business(es) win.
- drallison 16y ago
  What do you believe would happen it FedEx and UPS (and who ever else wanted) needed to provide regular first class mail delivery and other letter services to every postal address in the United States for, say, $0.44/ounce in return for a license to deliver urgent mail and packages?

jwhitlark 16y ago

Years ago, the USPS proposed to give everyone that had an address an email account, for receipt and payment of bills. Then they priced it at the cost of two first class stamps. The program died, and we lost what might have been a vaulable piece of new infrastructure.

iamgoat 16y ago
Time to retry this program. Every year that passes is a better opportunity for the postal service. More people are online and many businesses have paperless statement options. Less important letter mail is being delivered. I would pay not to have to check my physical mailbox but once a month. Next up, get rid of yellow pages.

mkramlich 16y ago

solution: some permutation of raising prices or reducing costs. next story :)

utefan001 16y ago

My friend who is a USPS contractor says management wants to cut costs by eliminating Saturday delivery, but the politicians don't have the balls to approve it. They are only worried about getting re-elected.

util 16y ago

Does the dip in NFLX around noon EST correspond to this? http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:NFLX http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NASDAQ:NFLX

brianobush 16y ago

considering I haven't checked my (physical) mailbox for two days now, I wonder the effectiveness and necessity of the service. I know many people that do depend on their services, but I think the USPS will become a thing of the past eventually.

chrisbennet 16y ago

I think the USPS is importance lies in that they serve a section of the market that wouldn't be served otherwise. Their charter probably requires that they deliver mail to rural areas i.e. unprofitable ones. If you really wanted them to be competitive you would allow them to ditch their "unprofitable" routes (sorry Alaska) and fund their retirements like Fedex and UPS. As an aside, it does seem that they are "ad supported" to a certain extent.