Posted on 08/14/2009 10:52:17 AM PDT by JoeProBono
OTISFIELD, Maine, Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Officials in Otisfield now say residents get to keep the small Maine town's sole mailbox after the U.S. Postal Service had announced it would be removed.
The officials said they have struck a deal to allow the town, which does not have a post office, to keep the only mailbox available to residents, WMTW-TV, Auburn, Maine, reported Thursday.
The decision made last month to remove the box triggered multiple complaints from residents. One woman threatened to chain herself to the mailbox to keep it from being removed.
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.
Fast forward 10 years into obamacare and replace “mailbox” with “doctor” in the story for a preview of the news...
Tiny town...maybe they could make it a smaller mailbox?
“The town was so small, the local hooker was a virgin.” - Rodney Dangerfield
?? 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.
Why don't they just make less frequent pick-ups?
wondering what population qualifies for tiny town.
Why don’t the people of the town just use FedEx or UPS?
Little Pond (Otisfield Maine)10-10-08
Playing post office is the only fun they have in their burg.
"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
FWIW.
Ain't much in that part of the Northern Woods.
“Why don’t the people of the town just use FedEx or UPS”?
ILLEGAL....per postal regulations parcels only
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.
Are we outsourcing our mail sorting too now?
No wonder it takes me so long to get my Netflix rentals...
Both city limit signs are on the same post.
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).
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