It’s sublet to FedEx - which is why there is now a FedEx drop box in just about every post office.
Express Mail gets handed off to FedEx for transport from post office to post office. It’s cheaper and faster for the Post Office to let FedEx handle it. They wouldn’t do that if they hadn’t had FedEx and UPS around to compete or negotiate with. Otherwise, an Express Mail letter would cost $50 to send and get there in three days instead of overnight.
I’m not saying that the USPS does a bad job these days - but competition from private carriers in various sectors has ensured that USPS service is good.
Did you read the article? La Poste, the French postal service, takes SIX DAYS to get a letter from one side of France to the other. France is about the size of Texas. Here in Texas, the USPS can get a first-class letter from Texarkana to El Paso, a greater distance than inside France, in two days max. Sometimes they get it there in less than 24 hours. Why? Because the USPS has competition. La Poste doesn’t, and this is what this EU law is trying to fix.
Six days to get a letter under 500 miles was acceptable in horse and buggy days. It is totally unacceptable today.
I think they mean 6 days a week of service, not 6 days to deliver an envelope. But that sentence made me scratch my head too.
I agree competition has made the US postal service better. But that’s at the higher end of the market e.g. packages and express mail. I’m not sure if there is room for competition at the low end of the market.
It always boggled my mind that the Post Office delivers to and picks up from every address in America 6 days a week. There really should be no reason for Fed Ex or UPS. The Post Office infrastructure is incredible.
Sadly, I use the USPS quite often and there is definitely a thief at my local branch. As part of my business I send out about 5-6 packages a day from the post office, and each week I get about 3 complaints about the boxes arriving slit open and with the merchandise missing from it. That never happens with UPS which I use far more often. I am sure it is my local branch since I send these all over the country. I still do it because the price is the best and the item is of low cost. But it’s an annoyance/problem and very hard to find someone like a manager who will take responsibility to try to correct it.