Posted on 01/22/2016 3:48:46 AM PST by IBD editorial writer
Declining business and rising expenses are not exactly a recipe for long-term business success, but that is exactly what's going on at the U.S. Postal Service right now, the Government Accountability Office told a congressional panel on Thursday.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
Government involvement is part of the problem, but the primary problem is loss of sales resulting from loss of customers.
A similar fate faced the makers of buggy whips when the automobile came on strong and horse drawn vehicles disappeared. the same is true for the now gone fountain pen makers. they lost out to the ubiquitous ball point and gel pens.
Except with the post office, there is a mandate for postal service that universally delivers every day, every where.
While most get stuff via e mail, there are those that do nor or refuse to change. the question becomes how to serve those patrons.
The first way will be to adjust the way delivery is made. Service should be reduced to three days per week. the patrons are either monday, wednesday friday or tuesday thursday saturday. In what amounts to a one day delay, cost savings will be enormous.
a second savings could be obtained from ceasing door to door delivery. A series of boxes at the end of the block or some nearby convenient location would save the carrier much time.
The post office should either get out or totally revamp the package delivery business. Although the business is trying to grow, it might not be providing the revenue required.
Yes. I think their PC hiring practices have a lot to do with it. Where I live, you have to belong to a certain few minorities or forget it. And some of those who are hired aren’t terribly concerned with making sure they deliver the mail to the right address.
I think there was some survey of newcomers into the US and what surprised them the most about the US. One of the most popular responses was the USPS. They were surprised that the postal workers do not regularly steal mail and reliable. My wife is from Central America and nobody trusts the postal service there. If you want to send stuff back and forth from there you need to use a courier service. The USPS has problems because of Congressional interference, for example, if the USPS wants to close some postal office for a town of 50 people the local Congressman raises bloody hell and it does not happen.
It is going to be bailed-out by you and me. Take it to the bank.
My main gripe about the PO right now is that they don’t deliver to my house, because of cost cutting measures in the past. As a result, they provide me with a free PO Box. Not a problem.
Except when I order things online. And the ordering systems will not allow me to enter a PO Box (packages have to be addressed with both the physical and po box address).
And the company shipping uses the cheapest shipping option available, which happens to be shipping via UPS/FedEx, who get it across the country cheapest, but then dump it at a PO for the final delivery.
And guess what, no PO Box address. So my item gets returned.
The P O is so good, yesterday got back a piece of mail that I had sent in mid September and it was marked address unknown - where does a piece of mail go for 4 months?
Excuse the ? but what type of ‘intelligence’ is required to match up numbers and road signs vs. the ‘responsibility’ of putting it in box XYZ?
Now-a-days, are they not sorted by a machine? One would think the only thing left is to load ‘em up, drive ‘em along the route and ensure their ‘delivery’.
No rocket science requiring a 6-figure income and same retirement bennies.
now that is an interesting set of facts. however if the post office gets out of the package delivery business, it will likely be resolved.
The solution is not going to be an easy process
Take a look at the requirements of funding the postal retirement system. If they abolished the postal service the entire civil service retirement fund would immediately be insolvent. Congress has been raiding their pension fund to literally protect their own pensions.
...
If somebody in the private sector did that they would be going to jail.
The 1990s were twenty years ago.
Perhaps your industry was not under constant attack in the 1990s. If your company’s primary business was going through a significant, two pronged attack (email and UPS/Fed Ex) you might structure your bonus plans on creating efficiency, expense reduction, or development of new or improved aspects of your business.
Unless you can define a bonus plan’s goals and objectives and compare them to your industry, your statement could be misleading.
I am no fan of a lot of things the PO does, its just in this particular case they are getting screwed by the Congress in order to save their own asses.
Mail is not required to be delivered everyday.
In all fairness to the USPS, most of their revenue is probably coming from advertisers in junk mail. About the only physical mail I send and receive is Christmas cards. Everything else can be done electronically - bill payments, bank statements, etc......
Here is the Constitutional part:
Article 1, section 8: Congress shall have power to:
...Establish Post Offices and post Roads;
That’s it. The rest is graft and corruption. Lawyers building a monopoly, line upon line, here a little, there a little.
Now we have a useless behemoth government agency that provides nothing that is necessary.
Well... Multiple entities send me mail such as bills that barely get here in time to be paid on time, the way it is now. This is not really USPS’s fault - some of these places just don’t allow enough time between the bill’s mailing and when payment must be received.* Most of these I have no choice but to deal with. (It’s pretty hard to say “screw you” to a utility, or a relative’s care facility when it’s the only option in the area, for example.)
*It would help somewhat if ALL bill payments were required to be considered as “received” as of the postmark date (with USPS also being required to always stamp a legible postmark!!!)
E-mail is not an answer - my volume is so high already (just the legit stuff!) that it’s way too easy to miss a billing. This is not to mention the security concerns, what with average people not really password savvy, and such.
Much legal / financial stuff MUST go through the (snail) mail, too, and here again, in assisting my Mom with a recent (big) problem, we ran into situations where documents sent to her had to be turned around literally next day. This is clearly unreasonable on the part of the sender, IMO, but, there’s no good way to fight it...
Do you have the coordinates for Site Y?
**Now-a-days, are they not sorted by a machine? **
Those huge machines that sort the mail can only do so much. The keying in of zip codes is done by a person who sits at a console. Then it’s loaded onto trucks and is taken to local post offices.
The sorting of thousands of pieces of mail by address - then stacking it in order of delivery — and then loading into the truck, is done by the same person who brings it to your door.
Thanks to HUD, my old, fine neighborhood became a ghetto. Our main PO was in the midst of this area. Every personal letter I received was tampered with; some were blatantly torn open and the contents stolen. Statements, bills, etc. were left pristine. I turned in several deliverymen. They were either fired, or bumped to another route. If you think U.S. mail is a challenge, come up to B.C. or Alberta.
**I am no fan of a lot of things the PO does, its just in this particular case they are getting screwed by the Congress in order to save their own asses.**
Other than Congress, another issue that is causing loss of money for the PO is that, once they get past the probation period, it’s almost impossible to fire a bad/lazy employee - and the employee knows it.
lol Somewhere in Texas
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