Posted on 01/24/2011 12:28:06 PM PST by Justaham
The U.S. Postal Service plays two roles in America: an agency that keeps rural areas linked to the rest of the nation, and one that loses a lot of money.
Now, with the red ink showing no sign of stopping, the postal service is hoping to ramp up a cost-cutting program that is already eliciting yelps of pain around the country. Beginning in March, the agency will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices, on top of the 491 it said it would close starting at the end of last year. In addition, it is reviewing another 16,000—half of the nation's existing post offices—that are operating at a deficit, and lobbying Congress to allow it to change the law so it can close the most unprofitable among them. The law currently allows the postal service to close post offices only for maintenance problems, lease expirations or other reasons that don't include profitability.
The news is crushing in many remote communities where the post office is often the heart of the town and the closest link to the rest of the country. Shuttering them, critics say, also puts an enormous burden on people, particularly on the elderly, who find it difficult to travel out of town.
The postal service argues that its network of some 32,000 brick-and-mortar post offices, many built in the horse-and-buggy days, is outmoded in an era when people are more mobile, often pay bills online and text or email rather than put pen to paper. It also wants post offices to be profitable to help it overcome record $8.5 billion in losses in fiscal year 2010.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Unions run amok! No wonder the USPS is going broke. Post office employees make $32.50 an hour to stand behind a counter and sell stamps and ask you 14 questions. It doesn’t take a Masters’ Degree to put something on a scale and weigh it or place the letter in the correct PO Box. Pay the going rate for a cashier at a convenience store ($10.50) who does the same thing and add up the savings. A maintenance man who sweeps the floors and mows the grass for the Post Office once told me he made $18.50 an hour. But the unions will continue to fill their pockets until the Post Office goes tits up and then whine because the Government won’t give them more money to operate in the red.
I like my local PO, but would be delighted if they shuttered it in favor of providing us home delivery (and we live 3 miles from the post office and 1000 other residents, 5 miles from the big box stores, and 10 miles from the state capitol building, so we’re not exactly in the sticks.)
They might be able to work a deal with UPS and FedEx for rural delivery, that would save billions, by allowing the rural PO’s to go. There are thousands of them, in small buildings in towns that literally do not exist except for the PO, Wyoming has lots of them, and so does SD.
With apologies to those who will lose their jobs. The PO cannot run in the red, on our dime, nor any other business that desires to keep the doors open.
I’m just telling you my own experiences. That yes, it CAN happen, but it’s many times MORE likely to happen with the other methods I described.
In my not-so-remote town, 50 miles north of NYC, there are at least three P.O.’s within a 3 mile radius of my home. And this is typical in the area.
Mine is one.
Look at the zip code maps (as usually there is one P.O. per zip code).
EVERY little podunk town in New England has one, but there are areas in places in the Midwest and South where 5 townships all share the post office of one little village in the middle.
“The news is crushing in many remote communities where the post office is often the heart of the town and the closest link to the rest of the country.”
I think, in reality, many of the rural offices (sometimes employing no more one or two people) cannot be where cost cutting will achieve the most results.
I think the biggest problem is the postal workers union and their influence, including the influence of their crony political friends in Congress. The largest excess expense is most likely not where there are few employees, but where there are many and where there are more than needed post offices in a particular urban or suburban area. Those interests, not rural postal service, is where the biggest lobbying against the cuts will come from. Its also where the biggest cost savings could be made.
I can drive within less than five minutes to four different post offices. But, I imagine my entire are could be served by one, with maybe 2/3 the staff of the four we have now.
Watch, the actual closings will shut-out some entire rural towns, while all four in my area remain open.
But ya know what, I'd take the PO closed if they did the same with every other fed agency. About time for the Tar & Feathers.
The old “Firemen First” ploy is alive and well.
Ours for one. Some of the folks in the roughly 70 square miles served by the post office are illiterate. Guess who makes out checks and money orders? The postal clerk. Those same folks live in an area where internet access is dialup at best. Not to mention most of the elderly don’t own computers. We’re in the process of screwing the greatest generation that fought in WWII and Korea.
Most of the mail is delivered by contract carriers that sort the mail in that liitle post office. Most folks (maybe 60) in this unincorporated town don’t travel in winter.
I think the post office would save much more money by delayering management. Simply cut the management levels by half.
They could save ALOT of money by not spending so much on TV advertising, sending the 3 separate family members living in our household the same promotional mailings, DVDs about how to print our own postage, flat-rate flyers, etc., constantly.
So your routes can’t be handled by carriers that sort and bag from a larger town in your area?
Whoops that’s supposed to be ‘post office’, not ‘pot office’.
Probably but it serves like the town square for many older and retired folks...it is called a “community”, an antiquated idea some in this day and age might not recognize...
LOL! They would be making record profits if they sold pot as well as stamps.
There are less than 2000 full time residents in this community, and although my mailbox is only 1/2 mile away, the nearest PO is 15 miles-there hasn’t been a contract private-business PO here in several years because the postal department makes it impossible for a private business to turn even a modest profit on such a thing.
The nearest large city is nearly 30 miles away, the nearest town with a “big box” store is 23 miles away, by the way, and that is just fine with me. Just get rid of the budget pig USPS and let Fed Ex, UPS, etc. bid on being the provider of postal services for a few years, then bid it out again-competition keeps rates low and service excellent.
My uncle, who recently passed away, used to for a while go up the local tiny rural post office that was in a country store that closed. He would sit and talk the postmaster’s ear off while she was trying to work at the computer. He was a friend and was going senile. She would feed him about every day, breakfast, lunch and supper. He didn’t understand that she was working at the computer, kept asking her if she had it fixed yet. Then yak, yak, yak, until she just about went crazy herself; but I guess after he died she missed him. (It wasn’t a romance thing; I wondered a lot about why that community spoiled him rotten. He’d lived there about 50 yrs.) - The postmaster did a good job there for many years; but it was a challenge for her the last few months that he lived.
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