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Internet Usage Boosts Post Office Revenue
setirw writes "Contrary to popular belief, the New York Times reports that Internet usage has actually boosted the USPS's revenue, instead of decreasing it. It is commonly believed that the rise of the Internet has negatively affected the Postal Service's revenue, since e-mail usage is rapidly superseding snail-mail usage. 'Six years ago, people were pointing at the Internet as the doom and gloom of the Postal Service,' said James Cochrane, manager of USPS package services. However, the widespread usage of e-commerce sites has boosted USPS revenue, since millions of packages are shipped from such sites daily."
As far as I can tell, with all of the junk mail that comes piling into my mailbox, the USPS ain't going anywhere anytime soon.
Besides, they more powers and subsidies than any other delivery corporation out there.
I highly doubt they were scared - considering the quality of service I receive in downtown Philly - job security is not an issue.
The opposite of progress is congress
For you registration whiners.
I think this is obvious without any researches - if we buy stuff on the internet, they ship that stuff.
What would be interesting is how much less *letters* are now being sent via snail mail
I have an extremely entertaining conversation with one UK bank at the moment.
The clowns insist on using snail mail to reply to mails sent using their "secure" webmail. They have stated that they do not send emails to customers as a matter of policy and they are forced to stick to it even if this means filling Royal Mail coffers.
As e-commerce grows there will be more and more cases like this until the end-users start to actively use encrypted/signed email and banks start to require this for communicating with them.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
First class mail isn't where the money is, especially home delivery.
If they could they would not even deliver on weekends. Hell they could save money by delivering fewer days. My Aunt and cousin are Postmasters. Home delivery is the big expense.
If it wasn't for filler (all that junk mail) first class postage would be even higher. Its still the best deal for getting something to someone.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
..is about minimising your fixed costs while maximising your variable returns.
Ok - IANAE (economist) and IANAPM (postman) - but this is probably a reasonable simplification.
With the postal service, fixed costs are about delivering a single item, where as high variable returns come from large packages. With the decline of letters and such (due to e-mail etc), and the concurrent increase in parcels (due to online shopping) - how could they not make better returns.
If a postal service is making losses and is in decline (as a number are in Europe), I would suggest that they should stop looking at environmental factors, start modernising their organizations and provide a service that complements the needs of their 21st century customer.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
That is why they are just about to change the postal charges for packages to include the size of the object as well as the weight. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/5231576.stm Previously they only charged based on weight.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
The story on the old rumour mill over here was that Amazon was almost single handedly responsible for saving the royal mail in the UK due to the massive increase in revenue it brought with postage of larger packages.
Personally, I don't beleive Amazon would've single handedly saved it, but no doubt it contributed alongside all the other online retailers. I think it'll only get better for postal services and couriers too, it's the high street that should be (Well, "is" rather than "should be" in most cases) worrying as people shift from a culture of high street shopping to having everything delivered by mail.
I mean, even before the advent of emails, who wrote a letter unless he ABSOLUTELY had to? Instead, people called or, if it had to be written, they faxed it. Simply because of the speed difference.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
"When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."
- Alexander Graham Bell
It seems the post office are one of the few places that have found another open door rather than litigating to have the closed door forced open.
This is probably rather insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but projects like Postcrossing wouldn't exist if people weren't able to send post cards via snail mail, so at least in this case Internet has increased snailmail usage. Check out that site if you're interested in sending postcards to random people all over the world. It's rather weird, but I'm told it's an interesting hobby.
Follow your Euro bills at EBT
Interesting to note that a survey was done recently of the most trusted Government branches/offices/operations and the USPS was ranked #1. This is in direct contrast to the Executive Branch of government.
t ml
http://www.directmag.com/news/usps-022306/index.h
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Does this mean they'll be repealing the email tax I've been hearing about?
There's bunches of online vendors I do business with who I have to use paypal with (if they support it) because they will only ship to my billing address and won't ship to a PO box, and I have my mail sent to a PO box because I've had too much trouble with material sent to my street address going missing.
I don't know what the underlying reasons that they only use Fedex or UPS are, I just now they're pretty damn pervasive, and I wish the USPS would make them unnecessary.
Inflation + fuel prices + Congress telling them they must put billions into escrow...
As mentioned, eBay sellers often use priority email.
Why? Because the integration between eBay, PayPal, and the USPS is so seemless. With just a few clicks through a few screens a bidder has paid you, and you are printing out a pre-paid shipping label that you stick on a free box the USPS delivered to your door and that you can drop off in special priority mail drop containers that do not require standing in line.
You can also pre-print other forms of shipping but Priority is generally a little faster (though there is no gaurantee) which means everyone is happier.
I would say the masterstroke of gettting eBay shippers to primarily use USPS and on top of that use one of the more expensive shipping options means huge profit increases for the USPS. Now instead of sending letters which must generate very little profit they ship more packages with a better margin.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Well the monopoly they have over mail delivery is a pretty big non-cash subsidy, in my book.
I'm not saying that the USPS isn't pretty good at what it does, and I use them all the time, but let's be honest: they have a market that's protected from competition by law. No private corporation is allowed to carry letters for anything less than (IIRC) twice the USPS rate or $3, whichever is lower.
That they're self-supporting is good, but they'd really better be considering that nobody is allowed to touch their business area.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Er, no.
_ Service#Airline_and_rail_division. All of the air and rail transportation of US Mail is handled under contract, and a fair bit of the over-the-road trucking is as well. It's not cost effective for the USPS to maintain their own fleet of aircraft, when they can just have private companies compete to provide that service to them as contractors.
You've got that backwards. The USPS doesn't own any planes, and they have a relatively small fleet of trucks for the volume of stuff that they deliver. It's the Postal Service that uses a lot of other people's trucks and planes, not the other way around.
In particular, a lot of US Mail is shipped on FedEx aircraft. It used to be that a lot of mail was hauled on passenger airplanes (and the passenger airlines used to compete for these contracts, which is a story in itself) but they no longer allow packages on passenger flights for safety/security reasons, so they now put most air mail onto other freight aircraft. FedEx has one of the largest fleets of air-freight craft in the world, so it's natural that they actually do a lot of the transportation.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal
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