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 ...
It's been a user fee based government agency since the early 1970s.
BTW, the new, lower volumes are comparable to normal volumes in the 1980s. However, there are many millions more delivery stops these days and that runs carrier costs up substantially.
They could probably cut the loss to near zero simply by eliminating curbside (and certainly "door") delivery and require folks to get their mail at community cluster boxes.
That would substantially reduce the risk that your precious tax dollars would be used to deliver your mail to you ~
Think how much worse it would be for them without Netflix.
Does their pensions come just from the USPS?
I suspect you live in a different century ~ time to take your shots old-timer ~
Easy fix. Just raise the price of stamps to 2 bucks.
$75 billion means the USPS did not negotiate in good faith with the unions and associations and shortchanged each and every employee by about $100,000 ~ so, as I've been telling you, USPS employees actually pay for their own pensions out of earned income.
And you? Do you have a 401(k) plan perhaps?
I use Priority Mail to ship from home on a daily basis. I have done it for years and have never had a shipping related problem. The carrier picks the packages up at the door or in the mailbox and there is no extra charge. They also provide the boxes for free. That may change soon though. I used to use United Parcel Service but the driver used to complain right to my face when he had to pick up packages at my home. I even paid extra for the pickups. I also had a lot packages destroyed by UPS. Not too much experience with Fedex.
Horse Buggy makers are’nt doing so well either!
With free e-mail, who needs to spend 44 cents to print a letter and snail mail it?
Yep, I wonder how they think that cutting days and raising rates is an improvement.
10 years ago, I had 2 garbage pickups a week for less than $10.00 a month added to my electric bill by the city. Also got a 3rd pickup for rubbish if we had any.
Now I get 1 pickup a week. And it costs $26.00. And they are raising the rates again by $10.00 or more.
This is called improvement by government standards.
Have the customers come to the PO to get their mail like their Great Grandparents did. The carrier craft might not like it though.
I was going to say the same...netflix is the only thing I get through USPS, except for junk ads and credit card offers which don’t even make it into the house.
It’s an oxymoron!
Parcel mailings is not what is killing post office.
It is letter mailing, which can be done free and in seconds by email.
FedEx is great, UPS sucks bigtime. I get stuff from both. I have actually changed some suppliers I order from simply because they ship with FedEx instead of UPS.
YEAH NO KIDDING! Email is FREE! Banking can be done on-line along with paying bills. Who needs SNAIL MAIL and all the junk mail that pays only a fraction of what regular mail costs.
Let this be a lesson to those tax and spenders: The More you raise, the less people pay. We will find alternatives!
At 300 sq ft per parking space, and a peak period of half the customers between 3 to 6 PM, you would end up walking about 1/4 mile to get to your mailbox.
There are a variety of ways to compute this out, but it's an immense parking lot surrounding a building with lots of post office boxes.
BTW, when carrier delivery was established during the Civil War it was done to eliminate the very long lines of people showing up to check General Delivery.
My email is NOT FREE!
Neither is yours.
An easier fix would be to allow private non-union contractors to deliver the mail instead.
They would probably start turning a profit, then.
Very good point regarding Kodak!
Lots of very good companies found themselves with obsolete product and either changed or died.
USPS is dying.
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