Is this the beginning of the end to the U.S. Postal Service?

Postal cuts to slow delivery of first-class mail - Yahoo! News

 

Probably the beginning of the end of the experiment that the USPS could be....or should be....for-profit.

 

When they started sending every paper advertisement was a sign. Man I hate pilfering through that stuff in the mail box. I am always concerned a bill will be slipped up inside a advertisement.

 

just saw a list of proposed service cuts and closing branch locations here in chicago. It barely works the way it is with the huge volume of mail here.

 

You know everytime that starts theres the GOING POSTAL thing.
A friend of mine got hired on about 9yrs ago and he moved about 170 miles to get the job and they still have him listed as part time. Thats crazy, not real sure how they manage that but it does not seem right.

I havent spoke to him in a yr. I should give him a call and see what he thinks. We normally touch base around Christmas time each yr.

 

The postal service has been fighting an uphill battle since, well, since the fax came out. Before that all correspondence in my office was by mail to another office. Now it is all faxed. Then the email craze has finally reached a head of stream. How many have hand written a letter in the last 10 years. I wrote many letters back in the 70's and 80's many of which were international. No need to anymore. Then you can pay bills on line using your bank. Work the numbers. A household no longer using 10 first class stamps a month and an office no longer using 50 first class stamps a month and multiply by 20 million or more and you are talking a billion or more a year being conservative. Plus they go everywhere and deliver 6 days a week which UPS/FedEx do not necessarily do.

They have been around a long time, like Kodak, but the times are changing so fast there may not be a way to keep up with their respective revolutions. Then they have to deal with Congressional oversight despite being a supposedly independent entity. There is also all the governor's and mayor's who will be breathing down their necks. There is still so much that cannot be done by the internet. I for one would never take my Mustang Monthly over the internet and that is one reason Legendary Ford folded as no one would consent to internet delivery.

 

Yea that rings true. Kinda like Nasa

 

Charles Krauthamer put it well: We used to have the Pony Express, romantic, useful. Then along came the railroad. The Pony Express was no longer needed. The internet is the new railroad. (paraphrased)

Things change. People pay bills online, for the most part. The main thing I get in the mail is junk mail, which I take directly to the recycle bin. Credit card offers are shredded, as well as anything with personal information on it. I understand that the post office is mandated to pre-fund the retirement of its employees (I get the concept, not necessarily the meaning). It seems like an unfair expectation, but it's a reality. Privatize. The government will have to stay involved, I'm sure, in the cases of small, rural post offices, but I think, for the most part, mail could be handled by UPS and FedEx, et al.

 

Thats a good point Stu. I agree that the most affected would be rural America.
Using my most familiar and favored example, Mt Carroll has a population of just under 1700, heavily elderly or retired. There is no "smart grid" to speak of. Cell phone service is spotty at best, closest tower is 11 miles away and lots of hills and valleys. There are no dedicated UPS or Fedex stops, you call or drive it into Freeport, some 30 miles away. Everyone has a land line but dial up internet service is down more than up and S-L-O-W. Cable internet, although available, is very expensive and subject to the very regular cable service interruptions. Understandably, it comes down to the customer base...there just aren't enough paying customers to justify expensive service upgrades.
True rural America is still quite a bit reliant on the postal service.

 

Maybe raise the postal rates, cut out a few delivery days, and maybe the government can possibly fund some of the USPS cost.
It (government) funds almost every other agency. Who in their right mind complains about sending a letter across the country.......for .44 cents.

 

Get rid of saturday delivery would be my first step. not closing sorting centers. My citys is on the list for closing. Its so backed up with heaping piles of 'needs to be sorted' it takes a month to get anything. The next sorting facility is 355 miles away.I feel like there is only 2 in MN as it is.

 

There are 500 Distribution and Processing Centers (D&PC) in the country. The USPS is proposing to close approx. 250 of them as well as closing / consolidating a number of smaller lower volume lower earning PO's.

Closing these P&DC's may cause first class mail (FCM) to become delayed from a 1-3 day service to a 2-5 day service, depending on destination. The only mail service that we guaranty is Express mail which is our over night premiere service. If it's delivered late, it's free.

Additionally they have identified some 250,000 postal employees that will be retirement eligible by 2014, though they are offering NO incentive to leave.

The rates will increase and unfortunately service will suffer as they close facilities and reduce staffing levels in an effort to remain solvent.

I foresee the USPS following suit with the auto industry in that they will downsize manpower, right the ship so to speak and then hire a bunch of new employees at a significantly lower pay scale and with less bennies.

As for UPS and FedEx handling letter mail, it simply won't happen in great volume. They don't have the machinery or the infrastructure to handle that type of business for 200,000,000 + mailboxes every day.

Many of the smaller packages that the USPS delivers are originated by UPS and FedEx. USPS is contracted to carry these as we deliver the "last mile" to every home in the country six days a week.

As for prefunding, there is some 50-75 billion dollars paid in since 1980 sitting somewhere and congress will NOT allow the USPS to access these funds to finish the existing prefunding mandate. The remaining funds would be used for operating expenses.

It seems to a bunch of us that America's leaders want the USPS to fail, become private and then someone gets rich over night whiles tens of thousands of workers are fired, your service goes to crap and nothing in the mail stream will ever be secure again.

 

Like a lot of other things the postal service is curable but most people won't like the taste of the medicine.