Tiny town gets to keep only mailbox

upi ^ | Aug. 13, 2009

[JoeProBono]

[Hegemony Cricket]

Fast forward 10 years into obamacare and replace “mailbox” with “doctor” in the story for a preview of the news...

[jessduntno]

Tiny town...maybe they could make it a smaller mailbox?

[dfwgator]

“The town was so small, the local hooker was a virgin.” - Rodney Dangerfield

[Onerom99]

?? What would that do ??

It sounds like the town is way out in the boondocks.

I imagine (hope) the deal involved only picking up the mail out of it once every 2 or 3 days.

[retrokitten]

The Postal Service initially said the box averaged only six pieces of mail per day and they had planned to remove it as a cost-cutting measure.

Why don't they just make less frequent pick-ups?

[JoeProBono]

[wiggen]

wondering what population qualifies for tiny town.

[edweena]

Why don’t the people of the town just use FedEx or UPS?

[JoeProBono]

Little Pond (Otisfield Maine)10-10-08

[a fool in paradise]

Playing post office is the only fun they have in their burg.

[a fool in paradise]

Fast forward 10 years into obamacare and replace “mailbox” with “doctor” in the story for a preview of the news...

"I think private insurers should be able to compete. They do it all the time. I mean, if you think about, if you think about it, um, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. Right? The, uh, no they are. I mean, it's the post office that's always having problems." - Barack Obama

[JoeProBono]

[wbill]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otisfield,_Maine

FWIW.

Ain't much in that part of the Northern Woods.

[outhousepatrol]

“Why don’t the people of the town just use FedEx or UPS”?

ILLEGAL....per postal regulations parcels only

[hawkeye101]

6 letters a day is $2.64 in revenue. Taking in to effect cost of transportation, fuel, maintenance, and the salary of the truck driver or carrier to pick up this mail, I could easily see a cost of $10-$30 to pick up for this box. I would have to side with the USPS on this one.

How small is this town? I stop by a small pharmacy once in a while which is a retail unit for the USPS to drop off Priority packages or a letter once in a while, and I see a tub they have there filled with more than 200 letters in it for that day, just from this little drug store.

This is the problem the USPS is going to have. In attempts to cut costs and streamline operations, they are going to have tens of thousands of rinky-dink post offices that are complete money losers that need to be closed, complain to their congress critters they need to stay open, and under intense political pressure the USPS will keep these places open.

In this era of email, cell phone texting, and other electronic communication (which I use constantly), I still like getting a birthday or Christmas card, a bulletin from my church or school, or a letter informing me of important financial information. If you have ever been to Post Office processing facility, you would be amazed at how bad hand-writing has become in this country, and what a great job machines and clerks do in deciphering those letters to get a good bar code to deliver that mail on those mail pieces.

It would never work, because it is so simple just to put a single stamp for every letter you mail going anywhere, but it costs the same to mail from Brooklyn to Anchorage, AK as it does to mail from Brooklyn to Queens. If they PO could figure a way to say charge $.80 to mail a letter from NY to AK, but charge $.10 from Brooklyn to Queens, I think it would open up a ton more localized mailings and increase volume and revenue, but then again bureaucrats from rural areas would bitch and moan and it will never happen.

[a fool in paradise]

Are we outsourcing our mail sorting too now?

No wonder it takes me so long to get my Netflix rentals...

[rigor mortis]

Both city limit signs are on the same post.

[NonValueAdded]

Dear USPS, Surely it does cost you money to have someone drive the route to service all your mailboxes and if you eliminate some, you will save a little bit. BUT

Did it ever dawn on you that there are plenty of other choices open to the public to communicate and pay bills? That by making it harder for your customers to use your service that you just might be driving them into the arms of your competition? That you are being penny-wise and pound-foolish? (the good people in Maine know what that means).

[fours]

Fast forward 10 years into obamacare and replace “mailbox” with “doctor” in the story for a preview of the news...

you got it backwards: socialism tries to spread resources equally, capitalism concentrates them where the money is. when the USPS says they are trying to cut costs they are responding to capitalist pressures, like any private business would. whether this is good or not depends on how much you like Ayn Rand.

think about roads in rural areas -- we have socialized roads in the US. if we took tolls or taxes from everyone who needed a road, there would be no money to make rural roads profitable, so people in denser areas are footing the bill for road maintenance in sparser areas.

the same goes for police and fire departments somewhat. should you have to pay more municipal taxes for these services if your house is wood instead of brick, or if you live in a high crime area? maybe you could get a rebate on police-related taxes if you own a gun and decide you don't need the cops to show up quickly if someone is trying to break in?

anyway these are my current thoughts on government services: clearly we put up with quite a few socialist government services already, and whether health care should be one of them takes a lot of thought.

right now i think emergency medical care should be socialized (what kind of comparison shopping can you do if you burnt your hand or have a heart attack?) but dermatology, elective surgery, dentistry, etc shouldn't.