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A Blue-Sky Idea For the USPS — Postal Trucks As Sensors
An anonymous reader writes "The US Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. [Registration-required link; this no-reg summary encapsulates the idea, as does this paper by the same author.] (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise."
What are they gonna do? Dismantle the postal service? Just consider it infrastructure and pay for any loss from taxes. Surely the people of the US don't want to be without a postal service?
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
The easiest thing to do would be to greatly increase the rate for "Junk Mail" (4th class mail or whatever they call it). That "bulk rate pre-metered" stuff that costs next to nothing for a business to send, but still must be routed and delivered just like the payments I mail. I just throw it all away, and I imagine most people do the same. If it is really worth it to send, companies can pay closer to what the normal public pays. This would reduce the annoyance for folks at home while lowering the volume of mail (and raising the per item profit).
The postal service is going to be insolvent because the service they provide isn't worth the cost. If it was, people would pay a higher price for it. At the time that the constitution was written, it was pretty much the state of the art communication channel and it made some sense for it to be singled out as necessary along with post roads etc. Today, things are different. Most people don't use snail mail to communicate so it doesn't make sense to keep it the way it is. The modern day equivalent of the postal service's role in the late 1700's is broadband last mile infrastructure.
A few years back in the employ of one of the big-5 consultancies, I proposed a virtual post office box system for Australia Post. Nice option for the user, a single PO box that just had a permanent re-direct to wherever the person lived at the moment. Proposal got all the way up to the exec.
"Great idea! But letter volume has gone down the toilet. Thank you for coming."
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Ravnitzky suggests a variety of useful data that could be gathered by postal trucks outfitted with sensors:
detailed weather readings,
Once a day? Not useful at all. There are already tens of thousands of automated weather stations scattered across the country - I bet the author isn't aware of that.
road conditions during storms
I don't see a detailed record of how road conditions are, once a day, on mostly minor roads would help - and the state police already do this for major highways.
road quality (e.g. pothole)
This is not particularly transient - just ask the carriers to phone them in.
gaps in cellular network coverage, sources of radio frequency interference
Um... I don't see the market case, but maybe this one is at least plausible.
and in a homeland security context, detection of chemical or radiological agents.
Again - once a day?
#DeleteChrome
"detection of chemical or radiological agents"??? like, someone could detonate a nuclear bomb in NYC and no-one would notice except the postman?
-Evening hours to make it easier to ship (i.e. easier to hand them MONEY!)
-Drop Tuesday/Thursday mail delivery.
-Switch to Hybrid trucks, as their driving habits are about as ideal as it comes for a hybrid rig (low speed, lots of start/stop driving).
-Offer a "Spam" blocker service as a subscription to stop junk mail for a fee.
-Make their package tracking actually track packages, not just magically go from "In Transit" to "Delivered".
-Contract with Google to put cameras on top for nearly daily updates to Google Maps Streetview.
More distopian:
-Use lobbyists to subvert things so that email/online cannot be legally used to conduct business.
-Figure out how to be another "Too Big To Fail" organization.
Why don't they charge 5x more for advertisements? I get these crap coupon wads of paper like three times a week and it all goes right into the trash. Not to mention the dumb ass Charter love letters begging me to come back. I don't want my inbox or mailbox stuffed full of advertisements. We can't stop spam so we should at least be able to stop the snail mail right?
The problem with the USPS is that it while it is not funded by the Federal Government, it is controlled by it. This quasi-enterprise status is completely impractical.
To illustrate the issue the USPS has massive overcapacity for the service level it provides. Any business faced with this would consolidate or downsize in order to save money. Unfortunately Congress won't let them do it. Any time the USPS wants to close a branch, the people living in the immediate area protest to their Congresscritter who then blocks it. The result is gross inefficiency.
If it were possible to slap the Congress upside the head on this issue the USPS would have a chance. Right now it doesn't.
Congratulations, you've just described exactly how the USPS works.
Bajillions of people who live in rural areas (like me) pick up their mail at the post office, because the cost of delivery to their homes is prohibitive. Universal service is not, in fact, universal, and never has been. Even UPS won't deliver to my house—I've got to pick up their packages at the post office (!), too.
Also, your example is ludicrous. Have you ever heard of a house so isolated that it's in a "neighborhood" (?) five miles away and yet, mysteriously, this five-mile-long stretch of road, devoid of any homes or businesses, has a 20 MPH speed limit on its road? Because I can't summon any scenario in which that would be the case.
The post office is going to lose money because unlike UPS, they can't raise rates. They have to visit everyone's house 6 days a week.
It's actually a very very efficient organization. It's the constraints put upon it that make it so that it loses money. Congress won't allow this cost saving, Congress won't allow to cut service. Congress won't allow it to raise rates.
...
Actually it has made profits fairly consistently in the past, it posted a profit of $910 million in 2006. Since then it has taken it on the chin with the economy, and - as you note - the refusal of Congress to allow cost reductions or raising rates to allow it to adapt.
Any number of service cut backs that a private company would make in a heartbeat can restore it to profitability, as can appropriate rate increases.
It is a highly efficient operation - you cannot find another postal system in the world that does better.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The following paper demonstrates that the current system of funding the Postal Service’s Civil Service Retirement System pension responsibility is inequitable and has resulted in the Postal Service overpaying $75 billion to the pension fund.
The postal service is having money extracted from it each year, channeled to other parts of the federal government pension systems (mostly military). This is to help disguise how bad the federal budget is overdrawn. If the post office were allowed to fund their peoples' pensions the way every other government agency is, they'd be showing a profit.
Don't you think this point of view is just a wee bit convoluted... I mean its all your tax dollars, whether or not its the USPS or some other government agency choosing to foot the bill.
Determine if this is indeed a viable side business (and I assert it is). The fleet of USPS vehicles is potentially a superb resource because they travel to virtually all roads and to every person who receives mail at a mailbox once a day. Collecting sensor and (broad spectrum) photographic information, could prove useful for anything from locating "Gang Bangers" to analyzing the effects of climate change on native vegetation. Such a bank of environmental information would certainly become an invaluable resource. Since the information is collected on the "People's Dime", the information should belong to the people and be made available to government agencies, businesses, schools, and private citizens. As well the privacy and security of "The People" must be secured whenever possible, so as to limit access to people, or their residences to extraordinary circumstances with extensive legal checks and balances. Having this much information collected about John Q. Public's day to day existence would necessitate some kind of extensive policy on the collection and utilization of third party public information (i.e. business video, phone and Wifi interception, urban microphones, aerial and satellite surveillance of public spaces, etc.) To date this collection has been heavily weighted to the benefit of business and government, and against common privacy. The nation needs to address this now before things spiral completely out of control (and the wholesale convincing of the American people to abdicate their civil rights by shaking the terrorist boogie-man at them "booga-booga" needs to come to a crashing halt!!!)
The goal should be to obtain the value and power of an accurate, timely, and comprehensive national data-set, without giving Big Brother the keys to the kingdom. In the end, the only issue is what value does this information provide, what with it cost us in time, money and most of all personal privacy. As a distant incentive, it might make the USPS a viable business venture, but it hardly seems significant considering the titanic social issues concerned.
Actually, no.
The post office can deliver onto private property.
In fact, believe it or not, it can't be kept out by property owners if a resident wants their mail delivered somewhere. If someone wants their mail delivered inside of a locked apartment building, or even a college dorm that doesn't allow non-residents, and the post office wants to deliver there, the owner of the building cannot keep them out.
In short, if they have a letter for you, and you want them to deliver it to you at a location, and they want to deliver it at that location, they technically can demand to be let through whatever locked doors they want to deliver it to that location, regardless of whose property that is.
This is all mostly moot because the post office doesn't want to deliver mail in such a manner, though, that would be insane. It will often demand that people put up mailboxes on the public right away if they want delivery, and would certainly look long and hard before deciding to deliver mail on private property against someone's wishes.
But it raises an interesting legal point if postal employees are used for anything else while delivering mail.
But we're talking about putting them on postal vehicles, which operate 99.99999% on public roads, and it would be a simple matter to leave them off any vehicles that leave them.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
A couple of things: First, it's not your tax dollars, the USPS is not a full government agency, it's quasi-government. It's basically a private company that's wholly owned by the government, but receives no funding whatsoever and has to be self-sustaining.
Second, the USPS is already a viable business venture, except that stupid Congress keeps getting in the way. For instance, one of the reasons they're having problems now is because they need to adjust to the new market realities: the internet is taking over, and people aren't sending letters any more, so with less mail going around, it's not economical to send drivers around to every single address every day without a large enough volume of mail to deliver. This problem could be easily solved: simply cut out one or two days of deliveries (except for Express mail). However, they're not allowed to do that, because stupid Congress has mandated that they deliver mail 6 days out of the week.
The USPS needs to concentrate on the things it does well: it's a reliable way of getting things around for low cost, as long as you're not in too big a hurry. No one's going to miss receiving junk mail on Saturdays or Wednesdays (two days that could be cut). It's good for bulk mail, and also for small packages, now that people are ordering more and more stuff online. You're also more likely to receive your goods intact, as a recent Popular Mechanics article found that, in an experiment, the USPS treated packages far better than Fedex or UPS, who both subjected packages to much larger shocks, and also intentionally beat up packages marked "Fragile". The USPS just needs to concentrate on providing good, cheap, but not necessarily fast service, which is what most people want these days, and they'll be fine.
I have had this idea for a long time for the postal service to both make and save money. I would pay a small monthly fee for the post office to NOT deliver my mail.
Specifically, I want a virtual PO Box. All my mail would go to a processing center where the front and back of each item is scanned, OCRed, and placed on a web site where I can look at it all. I can then direct them to send or shred any individual item. Because the return address, etc, is OCRed, I can also set up filters for mail I want automatically delivered, like bills.
I don't have the deal with the hassle of sorting through and recycling junk mail, the post office makes some extra money, and they save money by having to deliver less mail. Direct marketers might not like it, but maybe they could be notified of send or shred decisions and can use it to help cull their mailing lists.
USPS is a world class organization. Nonsensical privatization or selling off, or unnecessary opening up will kill one of the best institutions of USA. I have used Postal Services in USA, Japan, Canada, India, UK and many other countries. The level of service and professionalism of USPS is world class.
Tat Tvam Asi
Serious question: What's this? [usps.com] A lot of people say the USPS is totally self-funded but then why do they request funding from Congress every year? Is that considered a separate organization within the USPS or something?
The blind and oversea voting and Revenue Forgone Reform Act (Which is lower postal rates for charities) are stuff that, for whatever reason, Congress has decided the post office should do for free or cheap, and Congress pays them each year for that. The Post Office is only self-supporting for normal stuff, Congress had it do charity work that Congress pays for.
The 'reconciliation' stuff is them getting their money back from money they had left over at the end of previous years and 'loaned' to the government. Presumably because there's a recession and it needs the money because profits are down. And, as the article points out, it doesn't have a lot money left 'in the bank'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?