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On a quick and dirty look, I don't think those figures are right. Here's what I found for 2020: USPS 2020 Revenues & Expenses Package revenue: $28,537M
by TimBurr 5y ago
On a quick and dirty look, I don't think those figures are right. Here's what I found for 2020:
USPS 2020
Revenues & Expenses
Package revenue: $28,537M
Overall revenue: $73,123M
Overall expenses: $82,309M
Net profit: -$ 9,176M
Mail volume - pieces per year
Packages: ~6.4B
Marketing mail: ~75B
First class mail: ~54B
The press release listed all volumes as changes and percents - I've made a quick effort to back out approximate total volumes.
Data from https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/1113-usps-reports-fiscal-year-2020-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/1113-...
Fedex
Revenues & Expenses
Package revenue: Unknown
Overall revenue: $69,217M
Net profit: $ 1,286M
Mail volume - pieces per year
Packages: ~4.6B
Marketing mail: N/A
First class mail: N/A
Packages are presented per day, but only count operating days (255/yr)
The source I found split expenses up into cost of goods sold/SG&A/other/operating. I'm not clear what each one means and don't want to misrepresent - try the link!
Data from https://www.fedex.com/en-us/about/company-structure.html https://www.fedex.com/en-us/about/company-structure.html and https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FDX/fedex/financial-statements https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FDX/fedex/financia...
So USPS carries more packages, as well as insane volumes of mail that UPS/FedEx won't. Despite the significant volume differences, expenses are within 20% between the companies.
- nickthemagicman 5y agoThank you for looking into this! That was very informative! I'm going to look a little deeper into it but that makes me feel better about the efficiency of the post office now.
- JPKab 5y agoThis was an excellent and informative post. The USPS really gets hosed by the fact that they are required to have a fixed price for the most rural, low-density locations that UPS and FedEx would never deliver to.