US Postal Service

[joea99]

Many people are upset with the USPS and that is understandable. But, put the blame where it lies.

Below is a link that describes the top position in the Post Office. That position was filled during the LAST administration, not the current one. The President, who ever it is, has very little LEGAL control over the Board.

Most of the problems I have had with USPS deliveries and mysteriously long trips have been under this guys watch. A one man wrecking crew, in my opinion.

You might also look into why the USPS HAS to fund the workers retirement plan IN FULL, while no other Agency has that requirement. That alone contributes mightily to the financial problems at USPS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postmaster_General

 

[StarTech]

I have to agree that most of the problems have been since 2015 for me. I use to could depend on the service to do their job but it has gotten to doing this job so poorly that I insist on vendors using UPS whenever possible.

I use to buy plates [sheets] of commemorative stamps for my collection but had to give that up when the local office didn't have them or even order them for me.

Right now Congress is looking into making the postal retiree to join Medicare when they retire. I just hope they tax them just like they do us to pay for Medicare or it will kill Medicare.

 

[NorthBama]

Our mail delivery is terrible some days it doesnt even run. I dont know what the problem is if they are short on help or just not showing up for work.

 

[bertsmobile1]

Like everything else
ACCOUNTANTS with MBA's who think that management is the same no matter what you manage
Then you get pork barreling with a lot of government departments where over paid executive positions become the "right" of loyal party members .
Then there is the idea that is the technology is right then 1/2 trained monkeys can do the job while swinging from the trees by one arm (private delivery services have the same problem )
Then there is political interfearence so every week you get pointed in a different direction
And of course check to see just how much money DHL , Fedex , TNT slip into the pockets of the parties to ensure the USPS runs badly .

We just sacked the head of our postal service because she gave some top executives Cartier watches as a bonus for doing a deal that was worth over $ 5,000,000 /year
The same government has no problems with rewarding it's own senior executive service hundreds of thousands as a reward for doing a deal to buy submarines from the French or aircraft from the Americans ( the first one crashed on take off on route to OZ and 3 more have gone down since then ) .

If people had the slightest idea of just how difficult it is to get anything from A to B at a reasonable cost then the would appreciate just how good the postal service is.
Where everything got stuffed up is when the international postal conference was due for renewal, the afore mentioned over paid & pig ignorant executives & MA morons from the large shippers ( principally the USA & UK ) wanted the new deal to go substantially more in their favour , but the smaller countries would not sign up.
So now all the country to country postal agreements have to be done on a 1 to 1 basis , which is good for the afore mentions morons cause they get to go to France, Tahiti, Switzerland etc on a government paid holiday ( sorry trade delegation ) to hammer out a contract .
So as of 2010 ( or there abouts ) international parcel post become a wild west frontier.
The upshot of this is all of the very profitable bulk country to country loads are being done by private companies and only the very expensive depot to door is being done by the post office.
Add to that all of the pretend delivery services ( ebay & Amazon ) where goods from overseas are bulked from China to the USA to a private contractor who then puts them in a local delivery package and drops them off to the post office for local ( unprofitable ) delivery to your door .
The USPS ( or Aust Post for that matter ) have no control nor any warning about what is happening as they would have had under the old agreements so Win Fin Ding gets a container with 500,000 items bought on line from China / Vietnam etc .
he slips them into a new bag, or just puts a bigger label over the previous one and dumps then at the local postal sorting depot which of course swamps them
And in the USA there is probably 100,000 Win Fin Dings all doing the same thing every day usually from a rail head where the containers go directly off the ships.

The entire postal system was not set up to do this so it is a case of having to force the square peg through a round hole that is too small on the run .

 

[StarTech]

Anyway I am helping to reduce the load on our postal mail system. I no longer ship via USPS, I send nearly no mail via USPS, and I have requested several vendors not to use the USPS when shipping my company packages. It like the way I dealt with A&I when they started sending emails that were having problems shipping orders as they were so overworked. I simply reroute orders after June 1, 2021 to other vendors that weren't so overworked. So it cost them $3,000 in sales but that is not my problem. Then one other vendor that couldn't get off their backsides to make a change and they lost sales for nearly 7 months last year. I just used one that did work to get things done.

It also doesn't help that our postal system eats their small customers alive on shipping charges while giving large shippers cut throat rates. It like when I mail a letter it is $0.58 for the first ounce but my vendor sends me a letter is it only $0.425. Or like I send a package it is like $7 within the states but when I get a package from China it is $1.50. If we all played on a level playing field would help.

 

[bkeller500]

It's past time we rebuild the USPS. We no longer need all of the services we had in the past but rather we need new ones. With the advent of email, on-line banking, internet shopping, remote learning, paperless billing, and Google, we no longer need daily delivery of mail service. The USPS now handles more packages than in the past and less 1st class mail. We need to rethink daily delivery. And Saturday delivery is likely a thing of the past. We can learn to adjust to a more efficient system that will still work for everybody. Not complaining at all about out current system as I have had no problem with it in the last 20 years but I know of others that have a gripe. My local system has been great an day route carrier is excellent. I would not blame the top guy as others have in the past. He walked into a archaic system surrounded by political games. It's a new world.

 

[bertsmobile1]

It also doesn't help that our postal system eats their small customers alive on shipping charges while giving large shippers cut throat rates. It like when I mail a letter it is $0.58 for the first ounce but my vendor sends me a letter is it only $0.425. Or like I send a package it is like $7 within the states but when I get a package from China it is $1.50. If we all played on a level playing field would help.

Every business gives larger customers a discount
I get 12% off the Stens normal wholesale price , I get 10% off my Allmowers orders etc etc
Down here if you buy mailers in 100 packs they are 1/2 the price of the single item, if you buy them in 1000 lots they are 1/3 the price.
Not only is this fairly standard retail / wholesale practice it also reflects the real costs .
Walk into a post office, stand in the que , hand over your letter watch them weight & scale it then ring up a 58¢ sale and the post office has lost $ 3 on the sale and that is before the letter has been processed & delivered.
Just like buying corn flakes, the single serve pack is 4times the price per serve than the 20 serve pack
The cost of ordering shipping displaying & selling them is almost the same .
It is the same story except the corn flakes are now the delivery of the letter.
Corn flakes have the manufacturing costs up front, delivery has the manufacturing cost post sale .

 

[StarTech]

Then in theory two 100 stamp rolls should not cost $116.00.

But it doesn't matter as I limit my mailings anyway that way the post office wont be losing on dealing with me nor do I waste money on useless advertising. I think I mail one letter in the last six months and that was to the IRS Monday.

 

[bertsmobile1]

It's past time we rebuild the USPS. We no longer need all of the services we had in the past but rather we need new ones. With the advent of email, on-line banking, internet shopping, remote learning, paperless billing, and Google, we no longer need daily delivery of mail service. The USPS now handles more packages than in the past and less 1st class mail. We need to rethink daily delivery. And Saturday delivery is likely a thing of the past. We can learn to adjust to a more efficient system that will still work for everybody. Not complaining at all about out current system as I have had no problem with it in the last 20 years but I know of others that have a gripe. My local system has been great an day route carrier is excellent. I would not blame the top guy as others have in the past. He walked into a archaic system surrounded by political games. It's a new world.

We have just done that overhaul down here, or at least started to do it
Letters are now 1 to 5 day delivery ( and that costs $ 2 Aust ) .
Urgent letters are 1 to 2 days but only to selected destinations and they start at $ 5
Letter runs have gotten bigger and now the delivery drivers are required to deliver all parcels under 500g as well as letters.
Drivers who no longer have runs are diverted into parcels and parcel runs have gotten smaller to reflect larger volumes & heavier weights.
New heavy weight parcel routes have been created.

What people forget is USPS 9 Aust post ) are massive oranizations and like supper tankers changing course is slow, difficult and very expensive process.
The letter sorting machine ( which we invented by the way ) sots millions and can take 15 to 30 people to run
But now days the volume of letters going through them the value of the stamp on the letters is less than the wages or the people running the machines .
Then here are things like local sub sorting depots.
Down here the PO rents a small space in a lot of big buildings to sort the letters into floors & offices.
These spaces are now too small so they are renting parking spaces and fitting out trucks to local sort .
Push bikes for suburban delivery are now too small so have to be replaced by small vans like those tiny 3 wheel vans of the 1920's till WWII.

All of this is costing hundreds of millions to do & some one has to pay for it .

 

[bertsmobile1]

Then in theory two 100 stamp rolls should not cost $116.00.

But it doesn't matter as I limit my mailings anyway that way the post office wont be losing on dealing with me nor do I waste money on useless advertising. I think I mail one letter in the last six months and that was to the IRS Monday.

100 stamp rolls are a lot cheaper than single stamp purchases or 10 / 20 stamp packs but don't know how much they cost as I only do bulk mailings ones every 4 years.
Those go to a mailing agent who charges me about 2/3 of the PO price .
Remember his mail is franked so the Postage is prepaid when he refills the credit on the machine & the PO does not have to print & distribute the stamps as well.
Then of course his mail is delivered to a mail depot presorted into post codes ( zip to you ) so again is cheaper for the PO.
The very first freight company I contracted to would re-mail around 2 tons of mail a week.
Eventually they made a pre-sort deal so we delivered to the local sorting depot and that scored them a 20% discount ( we got 20% more added to the machine when we refilled it )
Fedex installed the first automatic parcel sorting machine in Aust .
It cost 1.5 million and was considered to be a white elephant in 1984
By 1994 it was working over capacity 24/7 and they were looking to build one 4 times the size
Now they have a massive warehouse complex with a dozen machines each one handleing parcels of different standard sizes .
As I say repeatidly unless you are inside the transport industry most can not comprehend the volumes & complexity .

The good thing about the PO is they employ drivers on hourly rates, so the PO driver pulls up at the gate, gets out walks over to the padlock & chain , looks at it sees the slip link, opens the gte then goes & gets the parcels
The private service drivers are paid per item delivered and a lesser rate for non delivery but when you add the return fee, it woks out more.
So they slow down, look at the gate from 20' away see the chain, hit the "locked gate " key on their scanner then drive away