1st class mail from Tucson to Tucson goes 100 + miles to Phoenix to be sorted and then back to Tucson. No wonder they are losing millions.
That has always been the case for mail being sent across town. It’s never sorted locally, but rather at the regional plant. It’s actually more efficient that way; the local offices are not equipped with the machines or manpower to sort out local mail from all they receive.
You are wrong. The hub and spoke route design is a lot more cost effective than a fully networked route that conveys directly from every point to every other point.
The founders of FedEx realized this when they founded the company and they were severely criticized for it. I believe their prof at grad school even gave their paper on this topic a failing grade.
Airlines used to fly planes between every point, then they learned to route all passengers to a hub and adopted hub and spoke route design. Sure you have to go to a hub and often change planes, but that small inconvenience is one of the factors that made flying affordable to everyman.
Was tracking something from the mainland to Hawaii, and saw it go to Puerto Rico before getting back in the right direction. Took a couple weeks.
They closed a lot of local processing centers in favor of huge regional ones.
Doesn’t seem to be working well for them.