As long as one of those days is Saturday, because the DMV is already only open during hours when their customers are at work.

Or allow competition, the USPS could be out of business in a year and we wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Still, the Saturday delivery should get trimmed first, as most businesses close on the weekends and the deliveries are completely unnecessary.

Many people can only get to a post office on Saturdays.

Ruthlessly ignore suggestions for time saving procedures from experienced employees

Eight months ago, I submitted an idea that saves me about five minutes a day in the sorting process. If many thousands of carriers did my method every day, each saving five minutes, imagine the savings. But my idea seems to have been ignored.

I’d also like the bulk mailers to have to pay a disposal fee, per pound, which would be made available for claim by municipalities where the bulk mail is delivered, to offset disposal costs.

Finally, until the USPS can track parcels, I will use UPS or FedEx. Shame, really; for small parcels the letter carriers can do a good, economical job.

The PO has been spending money like druken sailors for years now and to borrow a phrase, “The chickens have come home to roost” — they spend billions on software and sorting equipment that doesn’t work. Millions on vehicles that are obsolete and dangerous from the day they are delivered. Ruthlessly ignore suggestions for time saving procedures from experienced employees because those ideas clash with whatever new vision is in vogue at the moment.

The Postal Service is the second largest civilian employer in the nation behind WalMart. Not one single manager, not one is in management because they were promoted based on merit. Every single postmaster and manager you have ever seen, is in that position because he or she either would not or could not do craft work. They are all clerks who lost their jobs due to automation or carriers couldn’t/wouldn’t handle delivering mail or got [airquote]injured[/airquote] and had to be moved up.

This means the USPS has the largest unqualified managerial force in the nation. When you don’t have the best and brightest running your company, you are not going to get good results.

With proper action, the PO could continue six day a week service and run at a break even cost. But you won’t see that until there is an overhaul at the top.

He offered early retirement for the first time to cut back labor and in short order turned the largest single company in the USA around.

He then started envisioning the future and think of ways to increase revenue. One idea was to use carriers to do meter readings and other services since he had a person at every house (almost) in the USA 6 days a week.

Needless to say the Unions did not like this an in a series of BS allegations they drove him out. So in short order the USPS went from dark to light to dark again.

In my opinion they never recovered from that power struggle. Like the plight of newspapers their situation has more to do with technological pressures than it does with the slumping economy.

The USPS is a quasi Gov Agency so while they operate independently they need approval from Congress to do much of anything.

We have the best postal service in the world!

Whether it’s California’s state employee pensions, SIEU dickering with Blagojovich over the price of a US Senate seat, or 300,000 GS-13s making more than $80K a year, public employees are the problem, not the Post Office. Unlike most public employees, postal workers actually work and provide a service.

They also had a FedEx box right outside the entrance. A bit counterproductive, no?

The USPS has contracts with FedEx & DHL. They do stuff for us, we do stuff for them.

Stop accepting junk mail and I bet the problems would go away.

Bulk mail is & always has been a money-maker for the USPS.

I think, but not sure, the largest profit is from selling commemorative stamps and other collectibles.
I am not sure they include that in their budget, but the profits and money they receive is enormous…plus people pay for these stamps, then never use them…hence the huge profits.

right2bright on January 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM

Nail.On.Head.

I was in this business (on the USPS side) for about 10 years. It is pure profit (minus production and transport costs), and a lot of it. For the USPS-produced collectibles, the stamps come cancelled so they never show up in the mail stream. The OTC sales of stamps to collectors is always a risk (they can show up at anytime), but as time passes, the rates change forcing a user of old stamps to make a stamp purchase to make up the difference; most folks won’t buy a make-up stamp. They’ll just hand over a dollar bill for a single first class stamp, and put the change in their pocket.

Another point is this: Who gets to pick up the pension payments if the USPS goes away? Those pensions are currently paid from postal revenue, not the US Treasury. If and when the USPS goes away, those pensions do not, and someone has to pay them. Who is that going to be? You and me. I say we may as well get a service for our money.

Healthcare costs that would be less were everyone to be sharing the burden a bit via nationalized healthcare.

DeathToMediaHacks on January 29, 2009 at 11:57 AM

Is that a demonstrable assertion? Overall health care costs would be less if it was provided through the government? Would quality also be the same or better?

And i am sorry but i need to cut costs..
So most packages are now going out either as ups or i order electronically (to minimize shipping)

I cannot afford to pay 1.00 dollar to mail a letter accross town..
I might as well drive it there myself..

seketabi, as for the FedEx box, we have cooperative agreements with them, DHL, and UPS. We deliver some of their stuff they can’t do cost effectively, and they carry a lot of mail on their planes. After 9/11, a lot of new regs prevent the airlines from carrying much mail. Why don’t we have our own frakkin’ planes? Ask our ‘leaders’ up on the Hill. We might be able to compete a little better with the other guys, you know.

When UPS or FEDX have a shipping office in every zip code, then they might be competitive for lots of small businesses like me. Convenience and timely shipping = service and that’s what I’ve found through trial and error with shipping packages. Besides, I’d rather pay USPS $12.00 than pay USPS $100.00 for the same thing. Send package, get package. Simple enough. You want a $25.00 item to cost you $25.00 to ship? OK with me as long as you’re paying.

Terri on January 29, 2009 at 12:57 PM

I generally have found postal workers very nice, however the management is a mess…about as incompetent as you can get, and an outfall of affirmative action.

And really, who wants to stand in line for a half hour to mail a package if they can go to FedEx or UPS or have it delivered online? The Post Office is the only business I’ve seen that will actually push paying customers out before they can make their purchase and slam the door in the face of a crowd of customers wanting to do business with them.