Posted on 07/06/2014 1:34:52 PM PDT by PoloSec
I am more of the mind that mail should be a function of the private sector, but that has its problems as well I suppose.
Government, the only entity which can 100% of the market and still lose money.
This will hurt Red States almost exclusively. Not blue ones. Of course I wouldn’t expect dimwit Issa to think anything through.
Absolutely no reason for Saturday delivery. It’s no longer how we do business in most cases.
I like it.
Considering how wired we are now, I would be good with going to 3-day a week mail (Monday, Wed, Friday). As it is, I only pick-up mine once a week anyway.
With 3-day service, they could use the other two days a week to sort mail and probably be able to cut their budget in half. I just don’t see a strong need for daily delivery anymore.
There is no reason the post office should be losing money. I am aware that they are required to fully fund their pensions at the time of hiring (unlike federal government/agencies) which has put a cash crunch on their books. Still, from my vantage point they are moving in the right direction. There is no other entity that can pick up from and drop off to every address in America every day. Fed Ex and UPS skimmed a lot of the cream off their routes but they are doing a decent job trying to get it back. Still some kinks, and those postal vehicles are not ideal for package delivery but $2 billion is less than 3% their annual volume. They should be encouraged to act like any business and plan growth strategies, not strategies to cut back their business. Their annual revenue growth is much lower than their competitors. I think expansion would help. How much does UPS make on Saturday package delivery?
Back in the middle of the last century my home town not only had Monday through Saturday daily delivery, but businesses received deliveries twice a day during the work week.
I submit that Congress should stop trying to screw We The People. We require a Postal Service and We require Monday though Saturday delivery.
So Congress, quit messing around! Investigate options as businessmen. And yes, that means nonunion options!!
That’s a good transition step as they announce a 5 year going out of business plan
They can start by closing our downtown post office which has a newer larger one 8 blocks away.
Oceanside ca
I have yet to get any piece of mail on Saturday that would have made a difference on, say Monday. If something is needed that urgently plenty of other options can be used from electronic means to a commercial priority service.
For packages, contract with the UPS stores or turn existing post offices into package stations, and let people pick up their packages from there.
Also, let the USPS get into the money-transfer, check-cashing, and pay-day loan businesses.
Mail service is obsolete. It's time for the USPS to embrace the 21st century.
Get rid of it!
And you could combine that with Saturday delivery. Half the people could be Mon.-Wed.-Fri., the other half Tues.-Thurs-Sat.
But then they'd argue who was on what schedule.
In the 1960s, they delivered residential mail twice a day. The mailman walked the route with his big leather bag.
It’s a demonstration of how generally useless our elected officials are that they continue to come up with ways to “save” the post office money that will just make it less useful and therefore lose it money, when all they have to do is stop making the PO pay for the next 25 years of pensions every month. Congress are the guys that put the PO in this situation with one bad sentence, and they can get it out by erasing that sentence, but no that’s too easy, let’s get rid of Saturday delivery.
If I really needed something delivered in a hurry, the USPS could charge for a premium service. What we have now is an anachronism and a huge waste of money and resources. Cutting down the amount of deliveries would save the operation and prevent the inevitable emergency bailout.
I believe they farm out all their parcels. Let’s look into those bazillion dollar contracts.
The way the Government works, they will probably come up with a Bill that forces FEDEX and UPS to start Saturday Deliveries (with no additional cost) to even the Playing Field.
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