[jthomas1600]

Originally Posted by Fandrew

Do we even need daily mail anymore? I mean 1/3 of what I get is redundant thanks to online accounts, and most of the other 2/3 is ads/junk mail.

Originally Posted by thesteve

With unemployment at 9+%, I'd say that daily mail delivery is very important to those people that are relying on it.

I don't know about daily mail being all that important to anyone. I don't know why they couldn't take each postal area and say this half gets mail service Mon. Wed. and Fri. and this half gets mail Tue. Thu. and Sat. Wouldn't you in effect be cutting the amount of carriers and the amount of vehicles needed almost in half? That's sort of how our garbage service works. Imagine how many more trash collectors we would need if we expected our trash picked up more than once a week.

I wonder if limiting the junk mail wouldn't help as well. Maybe charge an arm and a leg for people that want to send junk mail. Heck I would think that's something the dems could get behind for environmental reasons as well. How much freaking paper is used each day to send us all junk we don't want anyway.

[adamwagg]

Re the need for daily mail, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of legal/government things are in place (timeframes for responses etc.) based on the knowledge that you get daily mail and would need a change were mail deliveries timeframes were to rise dramatically. Just throwing that out there with no actual knowledge though

[normajean777]

Originally Posted by Bryan

well you can't just "scrap the union contracts". Contracts have to honored unless both parties come to an agreement to replace it.

The only real way for the USPS to survive is to drastically raise postal rates, which, unfortunately, takes an act of congress.

And UPS or Fedex would never take over daily postal delivery. It is not a profitable endeavor.

In the real world companies don't have to honor contracts if they go bankrupt.... Unfortunately the USPS is a government entity and conventional rules that everyone else follows do not apply to them. They go bankrupt, they likely get bailed out.

Honestly perhaps they should double or triple rates. It'll drastically cut back unneeded mail, and give the USPS some time to let everyone keep their jobs in the short term, while everyone affected find the best balance that meets their mail needs. I don't think daily mail will be a necessary part of our lives within the next 10 years.

[Rainer.]

I think a 5 day a week plan would be better, but we need to scale back the USPS in general in proportion to the slowing of mail being sent. A lot of post offices are shutting down, and that's fine, we don't need all of them around, but we probably just haven't downsized the postal service enough. The sensible thing is to streamline it.

UPS and FedEx can handle a certain proportion of the mail, but there can't possibly be a sudden shutdown of the USPS that either of those companies could handle.

[TunerSteve]

I can see a 5 day delivery schedule in the future, but even that will include part time workers losing their jobs. I would also support larger fees charged for mail delivery.

UPS and FedEx will never take on the expense of making daily deliveries in rural areas. Think western Kansas or Nebraska where you might drive many miles to deliver mail to just a handful of homes. I still get a majority of my bills through conventional mail delivery, and also pay my bills by check through the mail. Changes will be made, and will be painful, but that is the nature of change. Many local communities here in Kansas have already seen the local post office close, and many more are on the chopping block.

[jthomas1600]

I've learned a few things as this has been on the news. There are US Postal mail carriers who deliver mail with mules in the grand canyon area and there are US Postal mail carriers who deliver mail on foot using snow shoes in rural Alaska. So.....nope....UPS won't be doing that. And it's a vital enough service I'm not opposed to tax dollars supporting (in part) the postal service.

My suggestion is still....minimize delivery days, increase the price of postage, and eliminate ....or charge a significant surcharge for.... junk mail.

[Chinchilla of Doom]

I saw the post master general(or someone like that) on the news today and he said unless Government does something, the USPS will collapse by next August. Also, cutting down to a five day week will only cut 2% of expenses, or so I heard on the news.

[Epaphras]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

I've learned a few things as this has been on the news. There are US Postal mail carriers who deliver mail with mules in the grand canyon area and there are US Postal mail carriers who deliver mail on foot using snow shoes in rural Alaska. So.....nope....UPS won't be doing that. And it's a vital enough service I'm not opposed to tax dollars supporting (in part) the postal service.

I like the idea that has been stated about splitting service areas in half and offering every-other day service to cut (by roughly half) the amount of manpower and other resources needed. No one sends anything by USPS to get somewhere in a hurry anyway (if you are in hurry, you would send an overnight FedEx).

An idea for the scenarios mentioned above might be for the USPS to, instead of staffing a post office or postal worker to physically deliver to remote locations like that, to contract with another service provider such a local utility meter-read to deliver US Mail while they are on their run to that location anyway. So in remote areas like that, "bundling" mail delivery with the other services being "dropped" at that location might be a way to save money.

Overall, I agree that daily mail service is not a profitable enterprise for FedEx or UPS to take on, at least not without drastically raising prices. From an operation cost perspective, USPS would be well-served to gut all operations except every-other-day one- or two-stamp letter delivery, leaving packages and other services entirely up to FedEx or UPS . A more moderate solution may be to contract with FedEx/UPS in such a way that USPS pays FedEx/UPS a fixed cost by weight (still lower than their current cost) for transporting a USPS parcel via the FedEx/UPS distrubition system -- so in a sense USPS would be "renting" the distribution network for those parcels. From a profitabilty perspective, the conundrum is that letter-only service is likely also the least profitable service, as the cost of flying or driving one ton of letters or one ton of 3 or 4 giant packages is the same (relatively), although one ton of letters at $0.44 might bring in more revene per "run" than 3-4 giant packages (hmm).

The goal would be for USPS to find a way to simultaneously cut costs and raise profits. One way to cut costs might be by contracting with FedEx/UPS to "rent" their distribution networks for a lower cost per-parcel than they are currently running (especially for big packages). For everyday letters, the split-service model would likely save a ton of money while providing only a minor inconvenience for consumers, and raising the postage rate would raise revenues and raise profitability by a large factor. The question is, will even these savings (and new revenue) be enough to cover the pending legacy costs?

The private parcel companies have demonstrated that they have a more efficient network in terms of delivery time, etc., but not necessarily a lower-cost network. But cost is deceptive: while a stamp is about $0.44 and a priority overnight FedEx envelope runs about $18, I wonder if when you factor in the legay costs of the USPS (and remove all government subisidies), what that does to the per-parcel cost of mailing an envelope? Which service is really cheaper when all factors are considered? FedEx has no one but the consumer to turn to to pass along operating costs to -- USPS has funding from the Treasury to close the gap between revenue and operating costs.

Good discussion.

[normajean777]

Originally Posted by jthomas1600

I've learned a few things as this has been on the news. There are US Postal mail carriers who deliver mail with mules in the grand canyon area and there are US Postal mail carriers who deliver mail on foot using snow shoes in rural Alaska. So.....nope....UPS won't be doing that. And it's a vital enough service I'm not opposed to tax dollars supporting (in part) the postal service.

My suggestion is still....minimize delivery days, increase the price of postage, and eliminate ....or charge a significant surcharge for.... junk mail.

Why can't rural alaskans get collect their mail at the nearest town? Thats how it works here. The farmers all have postal boxes in town where they can collect their mail whenever they come in. Heck I think they are trying to implement that in some new neighborhoods in my city, with a central box rather than home to home delivery. Definitely a cheaper delivery system.

[jthomas1600]

Originally Posted by normajean777

Why can't rural alaskans get collect their mail at the nearest town? Thats how it works here. The farmers all have postal boxes in town where they can collect their mail whenever they come in. Heck I think they are trying to implement that in some new neighborhoods in my city, with a central box rather than home to home delivery. Definitely a cheaper delivery system.

No reason they couldn't. You actually have two good ideas there. I like them both. I actually have seen the central box idea before.