Ok, so the USPS is failing with a deficit of about 7 billion dollars according to the Times. That’s on a total budget of around 70-80 billion (estimating based on a Heritage.org article with data from 2002). It could be way more but the data isn’t easy to track down/root out.
That being said, the recession is kicking the Post Office’s ass, and it has been beaten to a pulp over the last decades with the advent and ubiquitous use of email as an alternative to sending letters. So less stamps are being sold, but the routes and delivery methods and post office numbers remain the same.
In an effort to alleviate their troubles the Post Office was asked to suggest some reforms to their programs in order to save money. The results were: close branches and cut back on Saturday delivery/pickup of mail. And even though that would not even meet the 7 billion, it was flatly denied by the congressional leader overseeing the reforms because it “affected his constituents” (this is paraphrased by the Morning Edition report on NPR which included an update on the USPS situation).
So the problem is declining revenue (already projected deficit), lots of liabilities (payroll and benefits) and even with the cuts proposed,
It takes a lot of people, equipment and trucks to move 20 billion pieces. If the mail volume doesn’t recover, and the trends don’t look promising for that to happen, there’ll be a lot of excess capacity at the postal service. (NPR)
The Times continues,
“We have too many people, too many buildings, less revenue and less mail,” said Darleen Reid-DeMeo, a Postal Service spokeswoman for New York City. “We’ve got to become more efficient.”
The problem, as I see it, is that no one is really looking at the problem with a fresh outlook. If we view the USPS in terms of current economics, most entrepreneurs would see the issue right away: their freemium model is backwards. Literally, as in they are giving away and charging for the wrong services.
Sure they needed to offer free mail delivery a long time ago in order to create their market, who doesn’t try to give something away these days? But nowadays there’s no way to justify ANY free delivery on ANY day. They want to cut Saturday. I say cut free mail delivery and pickup every day unless the end user opts to pay a monthly subscription fee for the service.
And instead of charging for PO Boxes, offer them for free. This way people are attracted to the Post Office as a destination and can still receive mail at no cost (besides stamps). My suggestion would have several effects:
- drastically decrease the number of staff needed for mail delivery
- cut transportation costs (gas, fleet upkeep)
- create a new revenue stream from those that opt to receive home delivery and pickup
- prepare the USPS for continued reduction in pieces of mail
Now, any congressperson would say that their constituents would balk at this. Obviously, the USPS affects all districts, states, residents and therefore every constituent and interest. Mail is a serious business even if no one is bothering with it anymore.
This isn’t my last post on the USPS situation. It really grinds my gears that they aren’t taking a more serious look at totally revamping the system. GRRR!!!
a) First Post!
b) You have good ideas. Some things to think about.
1) if you give away PO boxes, your gonna need bigger post offices.
2) if you eliminate free delivery you could cut off your nose to spite your face.
I have thought that the postal service should partner with a car company to build a fleet of highly fuel efficient delivery vehicles. you’d be hard up to find a better test bed for high mileage high load testing of fuel efficient vehicles, and the postal service could save “gazillions” in ever increasing fuel costs. cause man those box shaped trucks have got to be so bad ont he interstate.
I agree with the fuel efficiency. But I’m not sure about the spiting the face bit. The problem is the whole model…so a drastic change could right the ship. No one else gives free delivery (I’m sure that UPS, DHL, Fedex and USPS calc fuel/transport costs for packages already).
Unfortunately the numbers aren’t readily available for me to calculate or even estimate how many people would opt to pay and how many total new boxes at the post office would be needed. Maybe they could just do cubbies with names on tape like in kindergarten?
Ok. Say a you have small office that has 5,000 deliveries (and that’s small), and I take away the seven carriers that deliver the mail daily. Ok, now I still have 5,000 customers who want mail. Where am I going to find the room to put 5,000 PO Boxes? A building by mine has 2,000 PO Boxes and the box section is bigger than my whole office. Blogging is a whole lot easier than planning, designing, building, and implementing.
The consolidation of resources and slashing of $ intensive operations (mail carrying) is one way that I could see the USPS shrinking (which, in my opinion, is what the current movement to reform the USPS is trying to justify: making it smaller). Could a company (or technology) like netflix impact how things are managed? probably (with better planning). Could cutting saturday delivery/pickup eliminate cost? yeah. And could eliminating all free delivery be replaced with centralized pickup/drop off? Maybe, it depends on whether the public wants to travel for it (maybe Walmart could add po boxes to their super stores). It’s all hypothetical until someone makes a move.
I just disagree that free delivery to the home is a public right (it’s no doubt convenient, but I get so much stuff digitally already that maybe it would continue to push the move to total digital-based correspondence/communication).
I think that it’s a valid point that capacity would need to be ramped up to support a centralized postal system that gives away free POBs. You’re not going to ‘find’ this extra storage in some magical place because it doesn’t exist. Someone is going to have build it and this would require up front investment into the redesign of post offices.
But I can’t imagine that this would be more expensive (over time) than sending people (actually, people + trucks) door to door, physical distances over many, many, many miles across hundreds of thousands of towns each and every single day.
If you were to design a post office box system, you would actually do it so as to efficiently distribute incoming/outgoing mail.
There is no way that the scattering of houses/apartments across cities/towns and the subsequent arrangements of people receiving/sending mail, could possibly be organized to the same degree of efficiency.
With a centralized POB system you actually have the ability to design, plan, build and implement a more efficient system. You can’t if you rely on people’s homes as the end point.
If Johny lives at the end of the block, the mailman still needs to travel that distance even if no other house on that street has mail in/out. That distance could be 1/2 mile, 5 miles, 10 miles, etc. ‘Wasted’ time and money.
Even if these newly designed post offices were just really long half mile hallways, you’d still have a more efficient system. If you then consider technological automation you could improve the system even more.
Furthermore, there is no reason not to have small post office box locations. A town of 30,000 could have 500 locations… which would be a lot for a small town. It is much easier to deliver/pickup to/from 500 location than 30,000 homes.