11 ms·

Tech experts, including Google, to discuss future of the USPS

42 points by localtalent 15y ago

hooande 15y ago
What is going to happen to the Postal Service? In 10-15 years, dead tree mail will be an anachronism. Mass mail campaigns will be much less effective because the current buying generation will have grown up ignoring letters. Will the post office be able to continue to function after losing 80% of it's current volume? Does this mean that we'll be trusting one or many startups to deliver important information from the government? I also wonder how a world with a much smaller post office would look. I know there are already several startups operating in this space, but it seems like there will be a large opportunity in "replacing printed mail" in the near future.
- DanI-S 15y ago
  According to their facts page[1], USPS process 6761 pieces of mail per second. They had a 2009 revenue of $68 billion. They pay $2.1 billion in salaries every two weeks. Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan. [1] http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm
  - cosmicray 15y ago
    > Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan. Traditional printed mail (flats, letters, etc) will not go away until every person has an iPad (or equivalent) and has broadband. Many many areas of the US are still without broadband access.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Mass mailers are already shifting to email (and to a lesser extent SMS and apps).
stretchwithme 15y ago
earthclassmail.com is what they should look at. Many things don't need to be delivered. The post office could actually let people see images of mass mailings before they are even printed or let people print them themselves with no delivery. In other words, where electronic mail won't work, USPS could handle parts of the delivery that make sense and how its done shouldn't matter. As far as delivery 6 days a week, I think most people could get by with delivery 2 or 3 times a week. Delivery of commercial could be scheduled to arrive just before delivery days so they could avoid storing too much mail. USPS or private equivalents could also accept and store electronic bills for you as a trusted third party so you can access them as long as needed. It could certify that bills have actually been paid. There are a lot of things that could be done to leverage its "official" position. But to do so, it actually must become technically competent. At the moment, it cannot even put the mail into the right box consistently at my house.
- simonsarris 15y ago
  > Many things don't need to be delivered. The post office could actually let people see images of mass mailings before they are even printed or let people print them themselves with no delivery. How curious, I imagine this is how people described fax machines in the early 70's...
  - jeffreyg 15y ago
    not everyone had a fax machine in their house and pocket, though.
    - jessriedel 15y ago
      Most people do not have a smart phone, nor are most people capable of paying all their bills online.
      - ugh 15y ago
        Yet.
alanh 15y ago
I don’t understand why you can’t address physical mail to an identity and let the USPS automatically route it to a physical address. Especially during and after college, I moved so much, I’m sure mail got lost en route. It would also help with privacy. You could have “throwaway addresses” given to certain businesses, possibly, or instruct the USPS to block mail from <sender>.
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "I don’t understand why you can’t address physical mail to an identity an let the USPS automatically route it to a physical address." USPS should have transitioned toward providing digital identity services for citizens and government at least five years ago. They were perfectly positioned to do this, and yet completely missed the opportunity.
- slillibri 15y ago
  You could just use usps general delivery as a throwaway address, if necessary.
- IgorPartola 15y ago
  UPS provides this: http://www.theupsstore.com/products/pages/maiandpos.aspx http://www.theupsstore.com/products/pages/maiandpos.aspx You just have to pay for both storage and forwarding.
  - alanh 15y ago
    I’m picturing this being something everyone can do, not a very niche offering. Interesting, though. ★ Edit in response: Only some of the same problems are being solved. If the USPS let everyone choose an ID, it wouldn’t be long before websites let (US) customers enter “tcollins12” instead of “Tom Collins, 145 Main St., Somewhere, ST 12345” during checkout… it wouldn’t be long before your public wishlist said “ship it to USPS address ‘alanh’” without giving away your residence… it’s not just an alias, it’s a paradigm shift. (With the UPS offering you linked, your address still takes the form of an address.)
    - 15y ago
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
IgorPartola 15y ago
The most sensible suggestion I've heard recently was from a co-worker who said it would make sense to not sound out postal workers to every house, but instead to keep all the mail at the Post Office. If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself. This would greatly cut down on the USPS expenses. I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just like Google Voice) that I give out and then the mail is actually forwarded to my new location if/when I move. UPS provides something like this, I believe, but why not USPS?
- naner 15y ago
  This would also result in the firing of a very large amount of postal workers. Now you and I don't really care, logically you would only keep a job around as long as it is needed, but politically this would be a massive problem.
  - IgorPartola 15y ago
    Agreed. But that goes into a very different discussion of how we are now so productive that having a job becomes a priviledge. I personally do not know if pure capitalism with unregulated markets scales well along the productivuty curve with a large population as a given.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Would just shift cost from delivery to storage. Might be a net gain (or a net loss), but would also have deployment costs. USPS does offer that, NCOA.
  - IgorPartola 15y ago
    This is assuming that the amount of mail goes down. Would also naturally cut down on the amount of junk mail, since most people won't bother to go check their mail if it's always just junk.
    - 15y ago
AndyKelley 15y ago
Why are we trying to save USPS? It offers worse service than any of the private companies, and according to this article, it currently has a net loss of 7 billion dollars. How about we delete it, then git commit -a -m "deleted unused stuff, should improve efficiency"
- smackfu 15y ago
  Because they deliver a letter for 44 cents anywhere in the country, in a few days. Do any of the private companies get within a factor of 10 of that price?
  - thematt 15y ago
    That should tell you something: it's not profitable.
- yrral 15y ago
  The USPS is obligated to deliver to any address in America for the same fee. If we had private carriers serve first class mail, it could cost pennies to deliver a letter to New York but hundreds of dollars to deliver to someone living in the middle of nowhere.
cullenking 15y ago
From talking to my grandmother, apparently people used to love the postoffice. Now, I don't know a single person in my age group (20-30 somethings) that doesn't despise the postoffice. The fact that I can't opt out of garbage being delivered to my door, by an actual person, is pretty infuriating to most. If the post office acted like a "letter carrier" and not a package/spam carrier, I think they could do alright. Let UPS etc handle shipping actual packages, drop the spam and drop delivery to 4-5 days a week tops, they would save alot of money.
- protomyth 15y ago
  The USPS makes money on the spam/junk mail and packages, not on letters. The profit incentive for them is not the same as their customers desires.
  - cullenking 15y ago
    I understand the bulk mailers make up a good portion of their income, and effectively subsidize regular mail. However, I don't think it's an acceptable tradeoff. You can makeup for the difference by probably dropping a single day of delivery - my guess is postage wouldn't even have to raise if you dropped to either 4 or 5 days a week.
    - protomyth 15y ago
      They are going with what they know makes them money. They have already cut Saturdays, and I would expect them to cut another day too.
      - cullenking 15y ago
        They haven't cut saturdays in my area, so it's probably just a regional or maybe rural thing?
yummyfajitas 15y ago
One fairly simple solution would be to reduce the frequency of mail delivery. Instead of Mon-Sat, we could deliver mail Mon-Wed-Fri or Tues-Thurs-Sat (different days for different zones).
- cosmicray 15y ago
  That doesn't reduce the mail volume. Then you would have to store the mail somewhere, and still have the same amount to sort. So on the days when they did deliver, it would take longer to sort it.
  - hexis 15y ago
    I think one of the premises of the OP was that mail volume will be declining over time due to digital communication.
  - stretchwithme 15y ago
    The commercial mailings could be given to the post office only on the days they'll be delivered. And this commercial mail is often already sorted Yes, it doesn't reduce mail volume. That's been collapsing all on its own, as has the effort to sort it.
ender7 15y ago
Anyone complaining about USPS quality of service should really travel to other countries. From my experience in Europe and elsewhere, USPS knocks it out of the park. One of the reasons that USPS is a national monopoly is that it provides an important piece of national infrastructure. I don't see how that is going to be replaced, as many features of federal and local government depend on systems for reliably sending citizens messages, such as censuses, legal notifications such as court summons, drafts, various aspects of voting and elections, information and notices from local governments, etc. Most of these depend on every citizen being reachable by mail, which is in the USPS's charter, and which causes a lot of overhead. If the USPS goes away, private companies will not provide service to everyone. I have no idea how these systems will continue function (e-mail is, for various reasons, not an acceptable solution at the moment). I would love for USPS to develop alternate forms of income in order to essentially "pay for" traditional mail delivery. I'm not sure it's in their DNA though.
iandanforth 15y ago
I wouldn't mind getting mail once a week. The question is, would this work for everyone? Are there items that are time critical (need less than two weeks round trip) AND must be sent physically AND would be prohibitively expensive to send through private mail services? Considering the items I have in my mail pile right now I can't think of any.
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  most people would probably agree. The exceptions can be handled.

42 points by localtalent 15y ago

What is going to happen to the Postal Service? In 10-15 years, dead tree mail will be an anachronism. Mass mail campaigns will be much less effective because the current buying generation will have grown up ignoring letters. Will the post office be able to continue to function after losing 80% of it's current volume? Does this mean that we'll be trusting one or many startups to deliver important information from the government? I also wonder how a world with a much smaller post office would look. I know there are already several startups operating in this space, but it seems like there will be a large opportunity in "replacing printed mail" in the near future.

DanI-S 15y ago
According to their facts page[1], USPS process 6761 pieces of mail per second. They had a 2009 revenue of $68 billion. They pay $2.1 billion in salaries every two weeks. Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan. [1] http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/postalfacts.htm
- cosmicray 15y ago
  > Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan. Traditional printed mail (flats, letters, etc) will not go away until every person has an iPad (or equivalent) and has broadband. Many many areas of the US are still without broadband access.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Mass mailers are already shifting to email (and to a lesser extent SMS and apps).

stretchwithme 15y ago

earthclassmail.com is what they should look at. Many things don't need to be delivered. The post office could actually let people see images of mass mailings before they are even printed or let people print them themselves with no delivery. In other words, where electronic mail won't work, USPS could handle parts of the delivery that make sense and how its done shouldn't matter. As far as delivery 6 days a week, I think most people could get by with delivery 2 or 3 times a week. Delivery of commercial could be scheduled to arrive just before delivery days so they could avoid storing too much mail. USPS or private equivalents could also accept and store electronic bills for you as a trusted third party so you can access them as long as needed. It could certify that bills have actually been paid. There are a lot of things that could be done to leverage its "official" position. But to do so, it actually must become technically competent. At the moment, it cannot even put the mail into the right box consistently at my house.

simonsarris 15y ago
> Many things don't need to be delivered. The post office could actually let people see images of mass mailings before they are even printed or let people print them themselves with no delivery. How curious, I imagine this is how people described fax machines in the early 70's...
- jeffreyg 15y ago
  not everyone had a fax machine in their house and pocket, though.
  - jessriedel 15y ago
    Most people do not have a smart phone, nor are most people capable of paying all their bills online.
    - ugh 15y ago
      Yet.

alanh 15y ago

I don’t understand why you can’t address physical mail to an identity and let the USPS automatically route it to a physical address. Especially during and after college, I moved so much, I’m sure mail got lost en route. It would also help with privacy. You could have “throwaway addresses” given to certain businesses, possibly, or instruct the USPS to block mail from <sender>.

Alex3917 15y ago
"I don’t understand why you can’t address physical mail to an identity an let the USPS automatically route it to a physical address." USPS should have transitioned toward providing digital identity services for citizens and government at least five years ago. They were perfectly positioned to do this, and yet completely missed the opportunity.
slillibri 15y ago
You could just use usps general delivery as a throwaway address, if necessary.
IgorPartola 15y ago
UPS provides this: http://www.theupsstore.com/products/pages/maiandpos.aspx http://www.theupsstore.com/products/pages/maiandpos.aspx You just have to pay for both storage and forwarding.
- alanh 15y ago
  I’m picturing this being something everyone can do, not a very niche offering. Interesting, though. ★ Edit in response: Only some of the same problems are being solved. If the USPS let everyone choose an ID, it wouldn’t be long before websites let (US) customers enter “tcollins12” instead of “Tom Collins, 145 Main St., Somewhere, ST 12345” during checkout… it wouldn’t be long before your public wishlist said “ship it to USPS address ‘alanh’” without giving away your residence… it’s not just an alias, it’s a paradigm shift. (With the UPS offering you linked, your address still takes the form of an address.)
  - 15y ago

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

IgorPartola 15y ago

The most sensible suggestion I've heard recently was from a co-worker who said it would make sense to not sound out postal workers to every house, but instead to keep all the mail at the Post Office. If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself. This would greatly cut down on the USPS expenses. I also would love a premium service where I get one address (just like Google Voice) that I give out and then the mail is actually forwarded to my new location if/when I move. UPS provides something like this, I believe, but why not USPS?

naner 15y ago
This would also result in the firing of a very large amount of postal workers. Now you and I don't really care, logically you would only keep a job around as long as it is needed, but politically this would be a massive problem.
- IgorPartola 15y ago
  Agreed. But that goes into a very different discussion of how we are now so productive that having a job becomes a priviledge. I personally do not know if pure capitalism with unregulated markets scales well along the productivuty curve with a large population as a given.
MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Would just shift cost from delivery to storage. Might be a net gain (or a net loss), but would also have deployment costs. USPS does offer that, NCOA.
- IgorPartola 15y ago
  This is assuming that the amount of mail goes down. Would also naturally cut down on the amount of junk mail, since most people won't bother to go check their mail if it's always just junk.
  - 15y ago

AndyKelley 15y ago

Why are we trying to save USPS? It offers worse service than any of the private companies, and according to this article, it currently has a net loss of 7 billion dollars. How about we delete it, then git commit -a -m "deleted unused stuff, should improve efficiency"

smackfu 15y ago
Because they deliver a letter for 44 cents anywhere in the country, in a few days. Do any of the private companies get within a factor of 10 of that price?
- thematt 15y ago
  That should tell you something: it's not profitable.
yrral 15y ago
The USPS is obligated to deliver to any address in America for the same fee. If we had private carriers serve first class mail, it could cost pennies to deliver a letter to New York but hundreds of dollars to deliver to someone living in the middle of nowhere.

cullenking 15y ago

From talking to my grandmother, apparently people used to love the postoffice. Now, I don't know a single person in my age group (20-30 somethings) that doesn't despise the postoffice. The fact that I can't opt out of garbage being delivered to my door, by an actual person, is pretty infuriating to most. If the post office acted like a "letter carrier" and not a package/spam carrier, I think they could do alright. Let UPS etc handle shipping actual packages, drop the spam and drop delivery to 4-5 days a week tops, they would save alot of money.

protomyth 15y ago
The USPS makes money on the spam/junk mail and packages, not on letters. The profit incentive for them is not the same as their customers desires.
- cullenking 15y ago
  I understand the bulk mailers make up a good portion of their income, and effectively subsidize regular mail. However, I don't think it's an acceptable tradeoff. You can makeup for the difference by probably dropping a single day of delivery - my guess is postage wouldn't even have to raise if you dropped to either 4 or 5 days a week.
  - protomyth 15y ago
    They are going with what they know makes them money. They have already cut Saturdays, and I would expect them to cut another day too.
    - cullenking 15y ago
      They haven't cut saturdays in my area, so it's probably just a regional or maybe rural thing?

yummyfajitas 15y ago

One fairly simple solution would be to reduce the frequency of mail delivery. Instead of Mon-Sat, we could deliver mail Mon-Wed-Fri or Tues-Thurs-Sat (different days for different zones).

cosmicray 15y ago
That doesn't reduce the mail volume. Then you would have to store the mail somewhere, and still have the same amount to sort. So on the days when they did deliver, it would take longer to sort it.
- hexis 15y ago
  I think one of the premises of the OP was that mail volume will be declining over time due to digital communication.
- stretchwithme 15y ago
  The commercial mailings could be given to the post office only on the days they'll be delivered. And this commercial mail is often already sorted Yes, it doesn't reduce mail volume. That's been collapsing all on its own, as has the effort to sort it.

ender7 15y ago

Anyone complaining about USPS quality of service should really travel to other countries. From my experience in Europe and elsewhere, USPS knocks it out of the park. One of the reasons that USPS is a national monopoly is that it provides an important piece of national infrastructure. I don't see how that is going to be replaced, as many features of federal and local government depend on systems for reliably sending citizens messages, such as censuses, legal notifications such as court summons, drafts, various aspects of voting and elections, information and notices from local governments, etc. Most of these depend on every citizen being reachable by mail, which is in the USPS's charter, and which causes a lot of overhead. If the USPS goes away, private companies will not provide service to everyone. I have no idea how these systems will continue function (e-mail is, for various reasons, not an acceptable solution at the moment). I would love for USPS to develop alternate forms of income in order to essentially "pay for" traditional mail delivery. I'm not sure it's in their DNA though.

iandanforth 15y ago

I wouldn't mind getting mail once a week. The question is, would this work for everyone? Are there items that are time critical (need less than two weeks round trip) AND must be sent physically AND would be prohibitively expensive to send through private mail services? Considering the items I have in my mail pile right now I can't think of any.

stretchwithme 15y ago
most people would probably agree. The exceptions can be handled.