“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?
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!
ML/NJ
And yet (I bet) USPS upper management will still collect some kind of bonus this year, and next.
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!
The post office fails to realize that their problems began when the made the size limits for priority mail 1cf. All other services have a size limit of 3 cubic feet before oversize charges begin. The post office in their wisdom decided 1cf was big enough.
They tried to force everyone to use parcel post, if you have ever used parcel post you know it is not dependable. When they made the change they almost put our company out of business. We had packages that took 38 days to arrive which is completely unacceptable.
So what did we do? We switched the vast majority of all our shipping to UPS. We ship 300-500 packages a week. That business that used to go to USPS is now going with UPS. Multiply that out by thousands of businesses and you will find the very reason the post office is losing money.
They want to blame in on the economy, however the real reason is mismanagement. They posted a 5.1 billion loss the very next year, and this was before the “worse” economy since the great depression.
Hmmm....
The post office in my town has a deaf old man, an oriental who doesn’t speak English well and a Lesbian with an attitude behind the counter. There are usually only two windows open most of the time and the line is out the door and down the block most of the times. And it seems like every time i turn around, the post office is doing a ‘price restructure’.
I get mail for other ppl at least twice a week. People in my town have hand delivered mail to me that went in their box. I have had credit card bills arrive either the day before or the day after they were due on more occasions that I care to count.
Yep... I use online bill paying.
I wonder if the democrats have thought of this one yet: the USPS takes over control of all email within the US and charges x cents per email sent. Attachments would cost more. Of course we would need to rent our email inboxes from the government for some annual fee (although they would probably be “free” and paid from our taxes). After a few years of this they would realize their 100,000’s of postal workers aren’t actually doing anything and would start delivering the emails daily (not on Sundays though) to our physical mailboxes on CDs.
The only thing I ever mail are formal invitations or thank you notes. I couldn’t tell you what the price of a stamp is.
$0.94 to mail a postcard to anywhere outside the US, what will be come Monday?
It was only $0.37 to mail postcards to the US from the Caribbean.
Remember the penny postcard?