Posted on 01/29/2011 9:05:46 AM PST by HChampagne
The Postal Service should not cut route deliveries to 5 days a week but rather to four......
(Excerpt) Read more at champagnedirectmail.com ...
3 days sound better imho .
It’s interesting.
We probably get a half dozen “real” items per week.
And a hundred pieces of junk mail and catalogs, 95% of which immediately go into recycling, LOL.
Since we have typically been getting mail about four days a week anyway it sounds like a good idea.
“Bite the bullet now. We can always revert to a five day a week delivery. “
I have a better idea. My sister does taxes for H&R block. The average retired postman is taking down $61,000 per year. Since they’re on the same retirement plan as Congress, we can’t change that. We also can’t do away with the postal service because it’s in the Constitution. However, I don’t think the Constitution requires home delivery. So, do away with home delivery. Everybody who wants one gets a box. Only first class mail is handled. No packages, no advertising. (Except, of course, the Franking Privilege, which is why we still have a postal service.)
Over time, we simply let the postal service die off until it’s a ceremonial office with no reports. Eventually, everybody will convert to texting or email or Fed-Ex or UPS. We tax payers no longer have to subsidize a communications dinosaur.
Sounds good. Mail has become a higher and higher percentage of junk anyway. Over the past week, as I recall, I received probably two or three pieces of important mail to piles and piles of credit card offers, store fliers, political parties begging for money, and catalogs. All of which get ‘discount’ bulk rate. So basically, a high percentage of our mail service is delivering cut rate stuff that just goes right in the trash. The exact opposite of a good business model.
The US Postal Service is an anachronism. Like phone books and newspapers, it becomes less relevant every day in the age of instantaneous electronic communication. 90% of what I get in the mail is junk and it ends up right in the trash. Maybe we should consider doing away with the Mail as a government run entity entirely.
Why not just post it here?
Is there bad language? Porn?
Have you considered all the consequences of your proposition respecting post roads? I view it as a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money. You will begin by only appropriating the surplus of the post office revenues; but the other revenues will soon be called into their aid, and it will be a scene of eternal scramble among the members, who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest. We have thought, hitherto, that the roads of a State could not be so well administered even by the State legislature as by the magistracy of the county, on the spot. What will it be when a member of N H is to mark out a road for Georgia? Does the power to establish post roads, given you by Congress, mean that you shall make the roads, or only select from those already made, those on which there shall be a post? If the term be equivocal, (& I really do not think it so,) which is the safest construction? That which permits a majority of Congress to go to cutting down mountains & bridging of rivers, or the other, which if too restricted may refer it to the states for amendment, securing still due measure & proportion among us, and providing some means of information to the members of Congress tantamount to that ocular inspection, which, even in our county determinations, the magistrate finds cannot be supplied by any other evidence? The fortification of harbors were liable to great objection. But national circumstances furnished some color. In this case there is none. The roads of America are the best in the world except those of France & England. But does the state of our population, the extent of our internal commerce, the want of sea & river navigation, call for such expense on roads here, or are our means adequate to it? Think of all this, and a great deal more which your good judgment will suggest, and pardon my freedom.- Thomas Jefferson in a letter to James Madison.
The postal service just needs to have their labor costs brought under reasonable control. That is where the problem is. When you pay thousands a month in benefits and your employees get a month and a half off in paid time away, you’re always going to bleed money.
The rest is fluff. Days of delivery, class of mail, etc is secondary to paying massive benefits and inflated wages. Let employees pay for any medical benefits in excess of emergency medical coverage. Cut vacation time to JUST two weeks a year and let employees pay and manage their own retirement.
The last modifier is making a retail letter go up to a dollar, so the postal service can pay back all the federal loans and bailouts. In other words, bring it out of the hands of unions and make it a business again.
HOw about this...a number on all pieces of advertising mail that says: "Call this number if you never want to hear from us again".
I heard the other day that their system is so dysfunctional that there are postal “workers” in their 90’s who are still getting disability payments!
A senator had proposed legislation to halt this.
Just do it. Do something. Stop the bleeding now.
I'm in a rural area where there is no street delivery. I have to take a 7-mile round trip to the P.O. where my mail box is and need the present delivery schedule as I do some buying and selling on eBay. To get UPS or FedEx, I have to drive 25-miles round trip to the next town. There are a lot of people like me, so cutbacks would have a big impact.
Here's one example where the USPS should take a closer look. I bought an item from a guy in the state of Washington, who shipped it parcel post with Delivery Confirmation. Here's the record so far:
Tracking number xxxxx USPS
Acceptance, Jan-21-11, 14:38 PM, SPOKANE, WA, 99208
Processed through Sort Facility, Jan-22-11, 09:15 AM, FEDERAL WAY, WA, 98003
Processed through Sort Facility, Jan-25-11, 12:09 PM, PHOENIX, AZ, 85043
Processed through Sort Facility, Jan-27-11, 12:54 PM, BELL, CA, 90201
Processed through Sort Facility, Jan-28-11, 09:32 AM, PHOENIX, AZ, 85043
I'm in northern AZ so you think, based on the zip, the package would have gone to Las Vegas, NV. (90 miles away) OK, I cut 'em some slack and allow shipment to Phoenix (400 miles away). Phoenix, instead of shipping to Vegas, ships it to Bell, CA (Los Angeles - 300 miles WEST of Vegas). As of yesterday, Bell has shipped it back to Phoenix. MAYBE I'll get it the middle of next week.
Oh yeah, a gripe to the USPS indicates that 14 days is allowed - from Washington to Arizona? (1,000 miles)
Agree, ever other day would be fine. Outsource delivery to private contractors, and restrict USPS personnel to providing processing and deliver services to local post offices. Eliminate the barrier that currently prevents competition in letter mail and restructure all existing pensions into 401Ks.
A good goal ought to be to reduce the size of USPS by 50% in five years. Then take another good look at it.
Exactly. Geez, we didn't even get a full sentence for a thread. As much as I'd like to read what you have to say, I'm not clicking through to give you a hit.
Ditto. Deliver half the town on Mon/Wed/Fri and the other half on Tue/Thur/Sat.
“I’m in a rural area where there is no street delivery.”
I’m a 40 mile round trip to the post office. I have a postal box because my mail delivery person would dump my mail in ditches miles away, along with other mail. (I got called by somebody and went to pick it up.) I complained and was told “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.” I waited out there to confront him. He was drunk. He had a woman on his lap; both had their pants down. I complained again and was told I’d have to produce pictures. (The clerk snickered.) So, I have a post office box.
Here’s another way to view it. We’re all paying outlandish pay and benefits to people we would not have as friends or even acquaintances. Yes, it may inconvenience some to have to go get their mail, but everybody else (the majority) who don’t use the service are subsidizing our convenience for the entire life of every postal employee. I think the price is too high for the service they provide. I think there are alternatives and we either need to adjust the price down or use cheaper alternatives.
They’re probably unionized so they’ll still get paid to drive the trucks or walk around neighborhoods in goofy shorts, even if there in no mail to deliver.
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