[sam_paine]

I thought they would be giving UPS and Fed Ex a run for their money.

They're leveraging the USPS last mile, the one thing that the USPS actually does well.

If you owned the USPS and UPS and FedEx and DHL all under one company, wouldn't you think your cost structure to deliver a set amount of packages was dumb if you had 4 sets of delivery trucks and one of those sets was subsidized by the fedgov?

[Zevonismymuse]

wouldn't you think your cost structure to deliver a set amount of packages was dumb if you had 4 sets of delivery trucks and one of those sets was subsidized by the fedgov?

I think I'm dumb. Are you saying that it is impossible for any business to compete with the federal government? It is tough to compete with city hall, unless of course you are selling good service. But with the price of fuel people might start caring about costs more than service.

[Dr. Sivana]

and one of those sets was subsidized by the fedgov?

Te USPS has not been directly subsidized in many years. That's one reason why they keep on raising rates.

You could say they are indirectly subsidized because they are granted a monopoly on not urgent letter mail.

In other ways, they have the worst of both worlds. They have to pay, through our postage, for a bunch of remote rinky dink post offices, pensions from the subsidized era in an era of declining mail volume, special rates for media mail and blind postage that have to be made up for by other classes, franked mail from congress-critters, delivery to AK, HI, APO and a number of far-flung territories for the same 42 cents, and other impositions that FedEx and UPS don't have to deal with.

Frankly, I think they do a pretty good job. If you ever tried to mail a letter to, say Italy, they do an excellent job by comparison.

[ASA Vet]

one of those sets was subsidized by the fedgov

Which one of those do you believe is subsidized by the federal government?

[muawiyah]

Ae you telling me DHL was being subsidized by the federal government? Which one ~ USA or Germany?