I recently found a picture postcard in a batch of old pictures. It is to my Grandmother when she was still a girl. It has to have been mailed before 1912. Notice the postage. I also found it interesting that it was in color.
Posted on 02/17/2012 1:10:30 PM PST by Java4Jay
The U.S. Post Office, facing financial losses of up to $18.2 billion a year by 2015, wants to charge more for postage, more for services, and to suspend Saturday delivery.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I do believe, in light of technological advances i.e. email, electronic bill pay, etc., that it would make sense to go to a MWF delivery system. I think post offices should be open on Saturday, though, because that is the only day many can get to them.
And although the Constitution maintains that the US Gov’t have a postal service, it seems to me competition for it should be allowed. We’d just have to have a U.S. Mail of some type even if there were competitors.
Thanks Obama
Wait,,a fifty cent stamp might be first of a new series. Next is NWA,, then snoop,,
They might have done that already. I went in to what used to be a very busy P.O.the other day and joked how I could walk right up to the counter. I wanted to mail a small box that used to cost me about 5.00 to mail and they wanted 13.00 to mail it! That was more than UPS with insurance and real tracking. I ask about the cost and I was told rates went up 3 weeks ago, particularly for none local deliveries.
I recently found a picture postcard in a batch of old pictures. It is to my Grandmother when she was still a girl. It has to have been mailed before 1912. Notice the postage. I also found it interesting that it was in color.
They should hire a rapper to sell their rap.
Just shows how government types solve a problem. Not making money? Charge more? The more they charge the more attractive alternatives such as online bill pay become.
Not too bright.
Home delivery is not mandated (it began about the time of the Civil War) It may be worth it to drop the home delivery and allow private, contracted delivery services to handle Door to door deliveries.
Dear USPS: Consider privatizing.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/03/news/companies/usps_postal_service_privatize.fortune/
Easily 90% of what arrives in my post box is stuff that I don’t want and didn’t ask for. I pay my bills online. The USPS sucks.
50cent stamp.
So now there is a rapper stamp?
What is this country coming to?
Mailing a letter next door, using a government service: 50 cents.
Having someone grow a kiwi fruit in New Zealand, harvesting it, shipping it to the United States, and buying it at a supermarket, all using private services: about 33 cents.
That will end my mass Christmas card mailings.
100 cards = $50
And that doesn’t include the price of the cards!
I use the Post Office almost daily to mail packages. The rates did go up from .05 to .25 cents. The rates are also affected by weight,size of package and Zones. A 1 lb package sent priority mail with delivery confirmation to Zone 2 Fresno is $5.95 while the exact same package sent to South Carolina Zone 8 costs $7.05
I have a postcard mailed in 1940. Postage was one cent.
Of course, letters could be mailed for three cents. Air mail was eight cents.
That's a great point
And I'm sorry to be the one to tell you but somehow, someway, pointing that out makes you a racist or against the poor, or working poor or something like that. Also, you kick puppies... and the puppies are also poor
What is a post office?
Every time they raise the price I start paying another bill online. My wife retired from the USPS I know first hand some of the waste that goes on.
why would fitty cent get a stamp?
I used to complain about that too, but that 90% of junk subsidizes your 10% First Class mail. I've noticed that all of my regular bills are asking me to change to online notices. And the State of Wisconsin requires me to file my fees and business reports on line now.
I recently did some heavy duty shipping. Using the P.O., I saved an average of $3-$5 per carton (depending on weight) over the two private shippers.
In toto, I saved big bread.
And if the P.O. rates go up, the privates will go up proportionately.
If you haven't tried it, don't knock it.
Leni
In the normal world prices are based upon supply and demand. If everyone wants your product you can raise your prices. In the case of the USPS, they have a product that no one really wants or even needs anymore so they defy the laws of economics and raise prices.
Government in action.
How much would it cost to have someone in New Zealand box one kiwi fruit and send it to you, using the shipper of your choice?
I was born in 1947 and if my memory has not gone completely bad, letters were still 3 cents when I was a kid. I also think post cards were still a penny.
Regular gas here in SE AZ is $3.449per gal.
I did not send Christmas cards this past Christmas, but used the money saved on cards and postage for charitable giving. Plus folks can take me off their card list and save some money.
What they should do is get rid of half of all USPS employees involved in handling mail, then deliver to half of all locations Monday-Wednesday-Friday, and the other half Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday.
Anyone who wants every-day delivery will pay for it, unless they get enough mail that it makes sense for the post office to send a truck out to them every day.
When I was a kid, we called them “penny post cards.”
| Organization | Wages as % of revenue |
| FedEx | 35% |
| UPS | 53% |
| Post Office | 82% |
There's nothing the Post Office can do if it doesn't change that.
Being born the same year I compliment you on your memory. You must also remember when the gallons on a gas pump went as fast as the dollars do today.
We lived in the country and ordered all kinds of clothing and small household items by mail from Sears Roebuck in Ft Worth, TX, paid for by postal money orders bought from the RFD carrier with cash in the mail box.
Life was good (and inexpensive too).
What’s the avreage salary of a postal worker?
Congress is the problem.
It will not allow the U.S. Postal service to make some of the changes it needs to, and will not use its power to force the U.S. Postal Service, and it’s unions, to make changes they don’t want to make.
If Congress does not quit its own madness with respect to the U.S. Postal Service, it will relegate it to a continuing slow painful death, when a ton of privatization could be injected into it, profitably, before eventually allowing it to be totally privatized as the third national, private mail and package delivery service (meaning regular mail service, at that time, would become opened to UPS and Fedex as well).
UPS and Fedex seem like such “better” delivery outfits, and part of that is true. But part of that is also due to the burdens - six-days a week general mail delivery to potentially, any/every physical address on the route; political hurdles to locations of and closing of locations of U.S. Postal service operations; political hurdles to private contracts and contractors performing many/most “customer counter” operations; political hurdles to locations of and closing of locations of U.S. Postal service operations; union issues deeper than any at either UPS or Fedex; and Congressional vasselation between hands-on and hands-off oversight.
An immediate “IPO” would not bring the taxpayers or the new company as much as would fixing some of the greatest burdens ahead of time, with legislation that allowed the executive branch to “make it so”, with a government appointed receiver (just like bankruptcy) who was allowed to make any changes they could in order to make the U.S. Postal service profitable.
Full disclosure - no one should think that even in a well-run, privatized and profitable U.S. Postal Service that a “general delivery” postage stamp would necessarily cost less than $0.50. Until the U.S. Postal Service was allowed to operate profitably, no one can be sure what the true cost of a general delivery stamp should be.
How much would it cost to have someone in New Zealand box one kiwi fruit and send it to you, using the shipper of your choice? A lot more than 33 cents,but the point is that private industry has optimized the method of delivery. I have to go to the supermarket to pick it up, but free markets generally entail some kind of compromise. Public enterprises pretend no such compromises exist.
For example, people might be happy to go to the post office to pick up mail if it would drive the price down by some considerable percentage. Right now, they get no discount for doing so.
Jay-Z, R. Kelly, and SnoopDog are gonna be pizzed!
Word!
The increase in the postage commodity is a direct indicator of the devaluation of the US$
Using the most economical means:
For a package weighing .3 lbs
USPS $74.95
Fedex $91.15
Dunno when it stopped, but for a long time the postcard companies had people hand-color the photos.
Walter Wyckoff, when he walked/worked across America as a social experiment in 1891, ran into a guy who was conned in Chicago (where else?). It seemed to be a variation of the "stuff envelopes at home" scam. For a "fee" the person would buy a group of photos to hand color at home, then sell them back to the company. Unfortunately, they always found "flaws" and wouldn't pay or else gave such complicated photos that it took too much time to be profitable.
A post office is a dilapidated, dirty building that is owned by the government and staffed with angry union workers. You can stand in line there for a good part of an hour to purchase an overpriced shipping service. You can purchase envelopes for an extra fee. Once your package is sent you have no record of its existence until the recipient tells you that it arrived. There is nobody to call regardless of the need. An option exists where for extra money you can purchase a number, and you can track your package by that number once per day, whenever the USPS worker can be bothered to scan the barcode.
Alternatives include FedEx and UPS. These services send you free envelopes and labels; you can set up your account on their Web sites and print shipping labels on your computer. When you are ready the driver will stop by your place and collect the package for free. The driver will typically not curse you for using their service. Once the package enters the UPS system (or earlier!) the package will be scanned and tracked whenever anyone touches it, and you can track it in real time. In case of change of plans you can call these companies and talk to a live person who will assist you.
http://stampsmarchingforth.blogspot.com/2011/10/usps-will-increase-first-class-postage.html
When I first looked at the postcard I thought it was a color photograph and wondered how they managed it back then.
I had scanned it at high resolution and decided to enlarge a portion and sure enough, it was clearly hand colored.
Fedex - ups wage/revenue difference is due to ups being union.
Ups - usps wage/revenue diff is difference btwn private union and govt union.
Hint - think about your govt union teachers....
I was thinking that packages might give the post office a chance of surviving in some form, now, not so much.
Why not just glue a dollar bill on the GD envelope?
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