Posted on 05/09/2009 1:16:49 PM PDT by Patriot777
"As the price to mail a letter is set to increase on Monday, mail volume at the U.S. Postal Service continues to drop. To counter the tough times, the government-run service operating 579 post offices across the state will continue to reconfigure its work force and its ability to compete for customers. Brian Watson, 37, of Lowell, said he's getting ready to make the jump from putting his bills in a mailbox to completing the transaction online because of the cost to use the postal system."
(Excerpt) Read more at nwanews.com ...
“Why, then, is the mail volume declining—other than the versatility and expediency not to mention cost-freedom of the internet?”
I think that’s enough right there.
If you ever get a chance go to a big USPS BMC (mail center). The employees are ACORN refugees or recent immigrants who cannot speak English due to preferences. I recall being at a bulk mail center when 3rd class (junk mail) had much bigger volumes. And yes “junk mail” helped the post office cover fixed expenses.
Well when the were busy you could stanbd there for an hour while one employee was calling in his horse bets. It is is a unionized work force in most cases.
Wonder why the financial system of America is sinking? Same people are running Fannie and Freddie and the govt thugs tell banks to make loans to anyone or go to JAIL.
Another real problem is we are in a Pelosi (2006 Congress) and Obama Depression if you have not noticed. People with money/brains and businesses do not spend moeny when a marxist is in the White Hut.
They just built a new one down the road in a small town (pop. about 200) Only mail service they have ... will be closing ... in operation maybe a year ...
Isn’t time to resurrect the urban legend about adding five cents to every email????
Mail volume rose for years, costs must go up to meet the increase in demand. Volume now goes down, cost must continue to rise for ?????? What?
What does it take for cost to go down? Competition?
Oh to finish the story. I went back a few years later in maybe 2007. The place was a ghost town and the service was better because they had no customers. Junk mail kept rates lower. It is like early bird dinner discounts. Helps cover the fixed costs and downtime and lowers the USPS deleivery cost per unit.
I think that’s enough right there.
Except we haven't yet reached the point of being able to "virtually ship" physical goods. =o)
However, recessions and depressions usually don't create drops this big. For that you have to look at DROUGHT.
What happens in a drought is quite simple. Throughout the area where there's drought folks tied into the agrarian lifestyle and economy (farmers for example) quit paying their bills. That phenomenon is usually detected by their creditors early in the game so they stop sending out new bills (which is called "cutting your losses").
Sometimes bankruptcies will increase, and sometimes not. Usually the creditors know payments on debt will resume once it rains ~ outsiders might not, but they have computer routines that "detect drought conditions" so much of this takes place rather automatically these days.
So, no bills being sent to customers; no payments being paid to creditors, and that's a chunk of main volume that just disappeared. Add to that Standard Rate Mail (advertising) which is no longer sent to people who are not paying their bills (at roughly a 10 to 1 ratio to First Class Mail, e.g. bills) and you have your explanation.
So, we have an Obama Depression, serious drought conditions in the Southeast, Texas, the Southwest, and CALIFORNIA, and that's enough mail to just toss USPS like a chopped cabbage!
In fact, I think it's a 15% drop, but it could be more.
Regarding costs, USPS usually gets caught unawares by the drought cycles because the first impact is in rural areas where postal costs are generally fixed. Costs pretty much the same to handle a billion pieces as it does two billion pieces in rural America since the infrastructure for doing that is high relative to the volume being handled. Costs of handling vary in urban areas. It's like there are two different sorts of mail handling business in America with totally different cost factors. Probably explains why you don't see UPS and FED EX running routes all over the countryside!
The only "preference" anyone gets for a USPS job is "veterans' preference" and there are several categories. 10 pointers can pretty well cruise right in provided they meet minimum requirements, and 5 pointers (like me) are right behind them.
I once hired over 100,000 returning Viet Nam War vetrans ~ many of them straight out of the boonies ~ gave 'em the test right in the field dodging bullets and mortars.
Well, enough on that. USPS has a pretty open hiring system. You take the test. You wait. The test is no big thing ~ just to demonstrate you can read and aren't going to walk out there in a modern industrial environment and lose limbs on the first day.
At present the United States supposedly has 19 million surplus EMPTY houses and condos. At the same time as recently as 10 years ago there were a mere 60 million houses and condos.
That 19 million is nearly a 1/3 increase in the number of stops with essentially no change in population, and certainly without a concomitant increase in the expected mail volume.
Overbuilding of houses and condos with below cost illegal alien labor has given us a collapse in home prices, millions of unemployed people, the destruction of the Postal Service, and a near meltdown of our banking and credit systems.
ML/NJ
but when you mail a check from florida to the left coast on tues, payday is friday, it gets there on thursday.
The post offices here in Irving TX are doing away with their single stamp overnuight vending machines, so you either have to buy a bopok or wait in line during the day. That irritates me greatly. I wonder how widespread it is.
And yet (I bet) USPS upper management will still collect some kind of bonus this year, and next.
That means that the only jobs available are those where people have moved on to a better job, or where they've retired.
Men and women have different expectations regarding how long they should futz around with a potential employer before they're hired. There are books written about the phenomenon, and I know it's always going to be a surprise to some, but men and women are different.
So, who are the women who wait around for a postal opening? Well, for starters, they are ladies who can work nights. About half the workforce shows up after 5 PM, and works to the wee hours of the morning. The other half show up about 4 AM to case mail (they're called letter carriers) and then hit the streets.
A woman with young children will probably not find a postal job compatible with her schedule, but a woman with teenagers will! Besides, with college tuition coming up, and the need for better medical insurance, USPS fits the bill ~ provided there are no young children at home.
Men all too often think postal schedules are a POS. I agree. Still, maintenance has to be done in off-hours (2AM to 10 AM for example).
My own area (Mail Classifiation) had a normal work cycle that fit in perfectly with musicians. At least 1/3 of the people I worked with were, or had been, professional or semi-professional musicians at some time in their working lives, and many continued to leave the Mail Acceptance Units at 9PM and go to the clubs to perform until 1 or 2 AM.
Alas, that wasn't all that large an employment category (350 people in supervisory and specialist positions, and maybe 3400 in clerical levels).
There were other matches like that where people could balance two jobs for a long period of time. Good way to be a high earner too.
There's also a division within the USPS between large facilities and small facilities. About half the workforce work at large facilities and half don't. With the movement of mail processing and the use of heavy machinery to Mail Processing Centers with thousands of employees, there's a tendency for men to show up in MPCs and women to show up in smaller retail, finance and delivery units.
About 20 years ago folks holding greencards as authorized immigrants were allowed to take US government jobs. That's why you see the Asian and Latino ladies at the post office. With the background check performed by Postal Inspectors on every aspiring employee, I doubt there are any illegals in the bunch.
Now, another factor in USPS employment, if you've been convicted of a felony the odds on you getting a job are between ZERO and NONE. Right there is a difference between men and women with women holding an edge in the employment race. Still, I think the ratio by sex is pretty much what it's been for the last 75 years ~ that is, 50/50 with some variation in different place.
What I think you are having a problem with are the thickness standards for letter mail. They are of somewhat recent vintage ~ I wrote the first ones.
What you need to do is quit stuffing all that extra stuff in the envelopes, particularly if it's advertising. Send that at Standard Rate rather than at a marked up First Class Mail rate.
It can’t help either that Ebay no longer wants Money Orders and requires Paypal. Also with the drop of ebayers due to this restriction this will also effect their mail volume, LOL!
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