It’s guaranteed to trivialize an important issue and send people off on a tangent.

Stop worrying about the USPS business model: it doesn’t have one. Like GM, it is a retirement and benefits fund.

If the Post Office had a “Do Not Mail” list with teeth for junk mail, you could easily cut the entire department in half overnight.

There’s easy solution to this because at the end of the day, no one really uses the Post Office anymore. It’s become more a welfare/jobs program than anything.

could drone on for hours and hours about it all but to sum it up, most folks here have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to mail and I just wish they would STFU and move onto topics they are more familiar with, like rocket science, SEO algorithms and the geology of Uranus.

AndyG_CT on February 10, 2013 at 9:09 PM

Well, Andy, You have established your bonifides and explained what You have to do to get a CUT RATE on YOUR product. You’s just like the broad who justifies voting for obama because he got her a new phone. I notice, your use of the STFU pegs you as someone who only wants discussion if everybody agrees with you. Why don’t you practice what your preach? Hmmm?

Funny how Amazon has no economic difficulties delivering my stuff out here, regularly and very quickly, too. Free shipping and it’s cheaper than Wal-Mart.

98ZJUSMC on February 9, 2013 at 7:54 PM

At the risk of pointing out the obvious, my Amazon packages arrive via USPS. If they cut out Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday, you may wind up waiting a whole extra day for that important package.

Then again, they DID say that only first class mail delivery was being halted on Saturdays….

The Congress shall have Power to … establish Post Offices and post Roads.

The operative phrase is “shall have Power to”, not the word “shall.” Congress is not required to do everything that it has the power to do. For instance, four paragraphs later, we find the Congress has the power to grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal. No one would suggest that Congress is disregarding some sort of Constitutional duty to issue private licenses to attack and capture foreign ships.

Congress may establish a national post office, but is not required to do so.

Rural delivery might indeed be part of the problem, but I’m very curious about how they deal with international postage. I can buy a widget from China and have it shipped to my door for less money than it costs me to ship that same widget to Texas.

Disclaimer – I spent 30+ years in the printing and direct mail industry.

Consider this, your 96 year old grandmother can send you a birthday card by just scribbling out your name, some portion of your street address and some components of your city, state and zip code and it will be delivered to your door just because she stuck a postage stamp on it. A pretty good deal if you think about it, despite any advances in OCR, that card will most likely end up being handled manually at several points in the postal system well before it ever gets handed off to the carrier who drops it in your box.

Business mailers on the other hand produce the mail the post office handles the least, often shipped via business contracted tractor trailer to the last post office in the delivery chain and prepared so that the mail carrier grabs their individual tray or bundle that is already fully prepared and sorted to have the mail in the same exact order as the carrier delivers it. Oh but hey the carrier looks at the mess of handwritten stuff needing more handling and then delivery, so they just leave that business mail sitting there for another day.

Business mail has to conform with thousands of rules and regulations on things that would dumbfound you. That is short form for why different mail has different price structures, it’s not about grandma’s birthday card paying the freight for “junk” mail.

I could drone on for hours and hours about it all but to sum it up, most folks here have no clue what they are talking about when it comes to mail and I just wish they would STFU and move onto topics they are more familiar with, like rocket science, SEO algorithms and the geology of Uranus.

I’m no package delivery expert here, but I’d always sort of assumed that the United States Post Office was pretty much designed with an untenable business model baked into the cake. It’s something which is mandated by the Constitution, thereby bringing the government into the mix, but it’s being expected to run at a profit while conforming to a business model which no sane, private business would ever consider.

Pretty bad when we have to spend so much time arguing about the friggin’ mail of all things.

If we fight over stuff like this while the Federal bureaucrats, politicians and their banker buddies are robbing us blind to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, then I don’t think we’re bound to end up in a good place.

The point of being a wealthy country is that we indeed have the option of subsidizing some citizens. If you don’t subsidize farmers through the bad times, they won’t be around to grow food during the good times. I don’t think the same can be said about major agribusinesses who own land all over the place. They can and do spread their risk. A private farmer can’t-he’s only in one place.

As for RFD, think of how that benefited private businesses like Sears, and other mail-order businesses, and continues to do so to this day for Amazon and others.

Complaining about paying taxes for roads we don’t drive on or for fire and police services we may never use really aren’t valid civic arguments.

Daikokuco on February 9, 2013 at 6:04 PM

Man you hit the nail right on the head.

Rural folks are subsidized, lazy welfare grubbing imbeciles. They lay around whining for free Obama phones, free healthcare, free food and subsidized mail while clutching their Bibles and cleaning their guns. I don’t know how anyone with half a brain or even a third of a brain could live that way.

Much better to live in town amongst the sophisticated, clean and enlighten groovy people. I’ve noticed when I go to town for provisions how nice everyone is to each other, how courteous the younger folk are to their elders and how clean the streets and restrooms are. There’s never anyone begging for change, on unemployment, food stamps, welfare or homeless or peeing in the parking lots of Wal-Mart, or selling favors or drugs on the street.

Progressive Utopia!

old school

1) Rural delivery one day a week. Like the garbage truck, your day depends on where you live.

2) Free PO box, come pick up your mail as often as you feel the need for it, including Sundays.

3) If you’ve got a fax machine or email, authorize the post office to open your mail and scan it, then deliver it electronically.

Interesting note about the USPS needing to prefund their pension and benefits plan for 75 years.

Yes, this is not much to do with economics of postage, rather the softness of the retirement featherbed.

I was talking with the postal lady a few weeks ago about a package I was expecting from FedEx. They will not deliver to my house if they can help it. They dump it off at the post office. Now UPS delivers to my house. But I know the driver & just tell him to drop stuff off for me at the school I teach at. There’s no reason to make them drive 30 miles out of their way.
But it is a service that’s been paid for TO FedEx. So I just cannot understand how they can do that unless they pay the USPS?

Badger40 on February 10, 2013 at 9:57 AM

FYI -If buying online retailers can use FedEx Home (delivered to an address by a FedEx carrier), or instead, to keep their shipping costs lower and avoid rural fees both UPS and FedEx charge, they can opt to use FedEx SmartPost. Another words the package is a piece of mail that FedEx SmartPost routed cross country then gives to the USPS for the “final mile” to delivery – hence it is really mail so the USPS delivers your packages in their usual manner. It’s the retailer making the routing choice.

It has US Government FAIL stamped all over it. It should be chopped up and sold off to the highest bidder, assuming a bidder can be found. It is, in fact, a model for most other federal agencies, all of which should meet the same fate.

Daikokuco on February 9, 2013 at 6:04 PM

Douche and bag. At least you would be if you had a clue what you were talking about. But then I’m sure your food is grown in a supermarket. News flash – no one is subsidizing me in any way. So from this ‘bumpkin’ to you – GFY, you smug, sanctimonious, ‘enlightened’ ‘tolerant’ liberal.

98ZJUSMC on February 9, 2013 at 7:54 PM

Badger40 on February 9, 2013 at 8:19 PM

YTZGal on February 9, 2013 at 10:51 PM

+ 1000 and then some.

So what this does is limit exposure to paying customers.
Here, if you work normal hours like 8 to 4:30 M-F you have only a small window to get or ship a package.

A private firm would do split shifts so that they could do business when customers are available.
But, like they say “bureaucracy and labor unions make the possible impossible”

oldleprechaun on February 9, 2013 at 4:57 PM

Thank you. I could add much more to your post but people already have their minds made up about postal workers (the actual “workers”, not the bloated management made up mostly of “quota driven” mandates) to even try to reason with them.
If an INDEPENDENT (i.e. non-governmental) auditor would ever examine the real problems at the USPS, their losses could be halved in the first year.

And … when we moved back from out of country, the inquisition at the local USPS about why we didn’t have a forwarding address was … disturbing. None of their d@mn business, thank you very much.

YTZGal on February 9, 2013 at 10:16 PM

Just like Kramer trying to cancel his mail delivery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hox-ni8geIw
And getting a visit from the Postmaster General:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nKlzQo3Wqo