Posted on 08/05/2010 9:41:55 AM PDT by Zakeet
The U.S. Postal Service reported a $3.5 billion loss in its most recent quarter Thursday, as mail volume plummets and retiree health care costs mount.
The USPS, a self-supporting government agency that receives no tax dollars, said operating revenue declined 1.8% to $16 billion during the fiscal 2010 third quarter compared to a year earlier, while operating expenses spiked 4.2% to $19.5 billion.
The quarterly loss was the fourteenth in the last sixteen quarters, the postal service said.
"A significant portion of USPS losses in the past few years has been due to an unprecedented decline in mail volume -- down more than 20% since 2007," the USPS said in a statement. "The replacement of letter mail and business-transaction mail by electronic alternatives continues to cause downward pressure on mail volume."
"Securing the fiscal stability of the Postal Service will require continued efforts in all of these areas, as well as further review of retiree health benefit prefunding," said postmaster general John Potter.
"It also will require that the Postal Service gain flexibility within the law to move toward five-day delivery, to adjust our network as needed, to develop new products the market demands, and to work with our unions to meet the challenges ahead," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
another example of a great government controlled business...
There is only one solution to the problem.
Reduce deliveries to three days per week.
They could start by charging a nominal fee for USPS boxes. As it is right now, I can order as many boxes as I want online and have them delivered, all free of charge.
While I like getting boxes for free, I wouldn’t mind paying a small, reasonable fee for their boxes (emphasis on small and reasonable.)
I have compared pricing and delivery times with UPS and FedEx and USPS beats them hands down. In all those years I have had only 1 package disappear permanently. I have never had an international package lost.
I like the flat rate boxes and so do my customers. In fact the flat rate envelope alone increased my sales by 20 percent.
However, I won't miss Saturday service if they shut that down. Don't need it. I think the postal system does an incredible job given the volume of mail they handle and the customers who give incomplete addresses.
So I was thinking about this, and I wondered what the USPS employment statistics looked like. I tried a number of Google searches with no luck. I would note that that in addition to reduced volume, the USPS supposedly does a lot of automated sorting. So if this were any ordinary operation one would think that employment numbers would be down substantially. My guess is that they are higher now than in 2007, and those were higher than years ago when all the sorting was done by hand. But it's just a guess.
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