Posted on 02/02/2022 6:39:34 AM PST by Kaslin
Even with the pandemic, the U.S Postal Service delivered on its obligations to deliver cards and packages to family and friends during the holiday season. Now Congress is finally ready to deliver a much-needed Postal Service Reform Act (H.R. 3076, S.1720).
This legislation involves tradeoffs and compromises that won’t fully satisfy all stakeholders. But Congress should keep focused on the positive principal points of the bill and not trip over distractions some parties are throwing in its way. The proposed law would facilitate the continued expansion of e-commerce. E-commerce is a crucial lifeline during the pandemic, especially for smaller enterprises and rural communities that need reliable, affordable access to the country’s 30,000 zip codes.
Where’s the money?
We all agree the Postal Service needs improvements. Over the past 14 fiscal years it has lost $87 billion.
But there is a recent bright spot: package deliveries. Revenues in fiscal 2021 were $77 billion, up from $73.1 billion the prior year. While revenues from letter delivery, the traditional USPS cash cow, continued to decline, revenues from package deliveries and shipping in the dynamic e-commerce economy rose to $32 billion from $28.5 billion the prior year.
These package revenues come not only from customers directly using USPS services, but also from private delivery companies that pay the Postal Service to deliver an important portion of their packages. This partnership has been especially crucial during the pandemic, allowing small enterprises that often saw few or no walk-in customers to stay in operation through e-commerce.
A forced divorce?
Section 202 is a key provision in the Reform Act before Congress. It requires USPS to continue to maintain an integrated delivery system. That means that the same carrier who brings you your letter mail can also bring your packages at the same time. Of course, this makes sense. It also is key to ensuring that the Postal Service can continue delivering to rural America.
Yet there is an economically senseless proposal pushed by United Parcel Service and others that would split the Postal Service into two units, one to deliver mail and the other to deliver packages.
Such a forced divorce would create a logistics and economic mess for the Postal Service and millions of Americans. Instead of packages and mail for each individual address being put on the same truck at the same time, sorters at local post offices and distribution facilities would need to sort the millions of mail and package items into separate bins; put them on separate trucks; devise separate delivery schedules; and figure out which drivers will drive which trucks. It’s quite possible many trucks would be half-empty if there is not enough letter mail or packages separately for particular routes. Such an arrangement is obviously much less efficient and ensures deteriorating service and much higher costs.
Not smiling.
You might smile to see the smiling face of your postal carrier twice a day as he or she makes separate visits to deliver your letter mail and your packages. But you won’t be smiling when soaring package delivery rates are passed on to you by enterprises and shippers, especially in these inflationary times. And on a tight budget, you won’t be ordering as many packages. Additionally, businesses large, and especially small, in middle America won’t be smiling as their orders decline because of those higher package rates and as e-commerce efficiency rapidly deteriorates.
Plus, the Postal Service won’t be smiling as it loses all its recent package revenue gains as its higher rates for an inefficient disintegrated delivery system drive away customers, many of whom will turn to private carriers. Finally, members of Congress won’t be smiling as they receive growing complaints from unsmiling constituents, or they face the need to bail out the Postal Service with money from those constituents in their roles as unsmiling taxpayers.
Steady ahead with reform.
Congress can avoid this mess. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has praised the Reform Act because it gives USPS the flexibility to make the system more efficient and fiscally sounder. There are still other reform issues to be considered in the future. But it is clear that if Congress can express mail the Reform Act, it will help move the Postal Service in the right direction toward a hopefully brighter future economy.
Why not delivery every other day?
The Postal Service already does that on some rural routes.
“Why not delivery every other day?”
Every day makes sense now that they are doing 3rd party deliveries.
Because the volume of mail would be double. Mondays are the heaviest mail day already -- and you ought to see how much mail there is after a Monday holiday: three days' worth.
People have been suggesting stopping Saturday deliveries for years without giving a thought to the logistics of it.
In 2001, I rode the Pony Express Trail from east to west, along with others, oh horseback.
We talked to a family in Wyoming that came to our mid day Vet check.
3 generations of ranching. They were a delight to talk to.
Their kids rode 66 miles to school on the bus-—one way.
Their trips to Laramie were 98 miles ONE WAY.
They got mail 3 days a week because there was ONLY one mail lady to serve the area. Her daily route was 98 miles.
“...the U.S Postal Service delivered on its obligations to deliver cards and packages to family and friends during the holiday season.”
How about using the modifier “timely” as in “timely delivered”; otherwise, the USPS is a crock that should be croaked! Yes, the Constitution indicates the govey has the post office, but give them a single building the size of a small town post office to meet the requirements, and then contract out the entire process to private contractors. And in this electronic age, prohibit handling and delivery of adversting mail/catalogs, etc. All can be sent electonically under user control.
Although it would make some of my eBay purchases more expensive, somehow the subsidy of Chinese sellers (shippers) such that they can offer free shipping on small items while it’d cost me several dollars to ship the same item even a short distance (say, to my neighbor if I was that foolish) just HAS to end.
This is just a killer for small US businesses or even sometimes individuals wanting to sell low or medium price items or even servioes such as repair services that often include inexpensive parts — until the shipping cost is considered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.