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USPS Losing Battle Against the E-mail Age
An anonymous reader writes "An article in the NY Times explains how the United States Postal Service is in dire financial straits, and will need emergency action from Congress to forestall a shutdown later this year. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said simply, 'If Congress doesn't act, we will default.' Labor agreements prohibiting layoffs are preventing one avenue for reducing costs, and laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down. On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006. They're currently hoping for legislation that would relax their economic requirements and considering an end to Saturday delivery."
I joined Postcrossing last month. I liked the idea of sending random people postcards, and in return receiving cards from other random people.
I send cards to a child in Finland, a girl in Germany, a student in Taiwan, a recent-graduate lawyer in the Netherlands and a woman in Siberia. So far, only the first two have received my cards, and I've not received one in return yet -- but it's only been two or three days. (I live in the UK, so it's no surprise that the cards to Finland and Germany arrived quickly.)
I like travelling and meeting people from other countries, so hopefully I'll like reading the cards I receive too.
They've got a delivery route to every single household in America every single day, and yet they can't seem to track a package through their system or guarantee a delivery day. Even their "Next Day" service is "We'll do our best, but it's not really a guarantee, and even then there are some places where we charge you the "next day" rate but we know it will be two days."
Fedex and UPS do essentially a semi-custom route each day, and they drivers are pretty well taken care of (though they have long hours certain times of the year), and they can track and guarantee your delivery dates, for essentially the same price as USPS. USPS needs to be a value option, or a better/more reliable service. Right now they're neither, and they cannot compete.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Fedex labor cost is 32%, USPS is 80%.
There are so many things that Fedex isn't required to do that the USPS is that it doesn't seem useful to look at just labor costs as a percentage of operating expenses. Fedex isn't required by law to deliver packages six days a week. Fedex isn't required by law to maintain an office in every dippy little town in the US. Fedex isn't required by law to investigate cases of mail fraud, they leave that the the USPS. Fedex doesn't hold packages and mail when people are away from their residences. Fedex isn't required by law to fully fund 30 years of pensions and medical expense for retirees in a ten year time span as the USPS is. The USPS actually makes a profit on its operations. There are estimates that the USPS has been overcharged $75 billion in contributions to the Civil Service Retirement System pension fund. If it weren't for a 2006 law requiring it to over fund it's retiree pension and medical expenses it likely wouldn't be in the financial mess it's in.
Has the US government done anything to actively sabotage the USPS?
Yes. Not every dollar of lobbying spent by UPS / DHL / fedex has been wasted.
From the fine article
"laws forbidding postage rates from surpassing inflation rates keep income down."
The inflation figures are fabricated by the govt to be unrealistically low, because so many outlays depend on it being low, in addition to incumbent reelection campaigns. Realistic inflation figures would mean realistic COLA increases for SS and frankly almost all other salary expenditures. However bad our deficit situation is now, being realistic about inflation would make it even worse. Therefore the numbers are doctored up until we can sorta afford the result. (Same thing with unemployment stats)
On top of that, the proliferation of e-mail and online bill-paying services have contributed to a 22% reduction in snail-mail volume since 2006.
Everyone I know either got email in the 90s, or frankly never will get email. For me it was '90, at least for a globally accessible internet address, if you're counting BBS / compuserve I guess I go back to '83. For my elderly mother in law it was 99. Everyone else in between. Other than children coming of age, I have never even heard of someone in my circle of friends / family / coworkers getting email after '99. It would be like blaming myspace for a sudden drop of TV viewership in 2011. Something that did start around the latter half of the 00s was the global economic second great depression, which is still going on. I would say economic local maximum peak year was probably about '07 and we've been in decline since then. That Might have a little to do with it. Abandoned homes don't get much mail. Unemployed people don't order many packages from Amazon (who mostly deliver with UPS around here, anyway). Business that close don't send bills or get payments. There are multiple "dead malls" in my area where seemingly permanently empty storefronts will never tx or rx mail. Ditto semi-abandoned industrial parks, etc.
Outside the article, think about it. UPS doesn't deliver on Saturdays, unless you pay some crazy rate, assuming they still offer that service. Does anyone care? Anyone? I'm told that UPS doesn't even attempt to deliver every day, in some rural areas. Like the driver gets the "north route" on even days and the "south route" on odd days and that's just how it goes. Does anyone really care? If my mailbox never got anything on Saturday, and twice the junk every other day, I really wouldn't care. Much like when they switched to "alternate week recyclable pickup", I gave a big "meh".
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
But let's get real, such an effort even if successful may fund one postal worker. The USPS is one of the biggest employers out there.
I think they should do several measures:
-Alternating day service. Route 1 gets Mo-We-Fr delivery, and Route 2 gets Tu-Th-Sa delivery. Mail carriers cut in 1/2. Express Mail already is handled by a different special carrier (I'm told) so that's unaffected.
-Cut down all underperforming post offices that are within a certain radius of other, more successful, USPS locations. I'm close to such a one, that is in a shack of a location, and within 7 minutes drive of it's main branch. It has one guy working there, less than 75 PO Boxes, half of them unrented (the next most rural place I know has at least 300 boxes, 90% rented). USPS has been trying to close it down for years but the union is resisting, even if the worker is taken to the main branch. Hard to understand.
-Open up automated kiosks to serve as advanced versions of blue mailboxes in malls/supermarkets/what_have_you. Emulate redbox, except for packages. Try a trial run. (All the USPS advertising is for flat rate boxes, they WANT the package business. Might as well try something novel.)
-Back in WW2, Post Office has Vmail. It's mail on special sized letters, shrunk to microfiche, and reprinted. Save many cargo ships for other purposes - they used to be pioneers. They should have an email to mail service - afterall laywers and a ton of businesses need to send out certified mail all the time. But why should they have to print it, run someplace to mail it, and keep track of slips of "certified" this and that? Send it to the USPS server, let a central place print it out, and mail automatically, for postage plus a small fee. The software keeps track of what was sent.
Just a few ideas. The USPS has to change and fast. It has to reduce their workforce. It has to do a lot of things. But ceasing to exist should not be an options, lot of online and offline commerce depends on them and will do so until perfect replicas of objects can simply be generated, like in Star Trek, just like computers can copy data files. Then they can call it quits.