U.S. Postal Service to close 2,000 post offices

Chicago Breaking Business ^ | 1/24/11

[Libloather]

U.S. Postal Service to close 2,000 post offices
By Dow Jones Newswires-Wall Street Journal
Posted today at 7:13 a.m.

With red ink showing no sign of stopping, the U.S. Postal Service is hoping to ramp up a cost-cutting program that is already eliciting yelps of pain around the country. Beginning in March, the agency will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices, on top of the 491 it said it would close starting at the end of last year.

In addition, it is reviewing another 16,000 — half of the nation’s existing post offices — that are operating at a deficit, and lobbying Congress to allow it to change the law so it can close the most unprofitable among them. The law currently allows the postal service to close post offices only for maintenance problems, lease expirations or other reasons that don’t include profitability.

The news is crushing in many remote communities where the post office is often the heart of the town and the closest link to the rest of the country. Shuttering them, critics say, also puts an enormous burden on people, particularly on the elderly, who find it difficult to travel out of town.

The postal service argues that its network of some 32,000 brick-and-mortar post offices, many built in the horse-and-buggy days, is outmoded in an era when people are more mobile, often pay bills online and text or email rather than put pen to paper. It also wants post offices to be profitable to help it overcome record $8.5 billion in losses in fiscal year 2010.

[upsdriver]

LOL, I’m retired now but I always got along great with the FedEx drivers and Post Office folks. We helped keep each other up to date on people moving in and out of our delivery areas. My youngest brother delivers for the USPS. We give each other a bad time.

[AGreatPer]

I have heard the argument that in many towns the post office is the town. Sounds to me like they should go to the local watering hole.

[Eric Blair 2084]

Bender, you don’t have a scanner, fax machine, e-mail? I thought everyone did.

[redangus]

The biggest problem the USPS has is the unions (sounds like a broken record doesn’t it). They have three they have to deal with and the unions run the USPS with an iron hand. Management won’t cross them on anything. That is why they have twice as many people as they need and why thing never get done efficiently. I made a few enemies in both management and labor because I didn’t kowtow to their demands. I wasn’t a lifer I was a consultant and was there to do a job. I had a 3 year contract and cared less about what they union wanted. People weren’t happy, but we got things done.

[nnn0jeh]

I life in a small town (about 10,000) We have 1 PO. Most of the times I have been in it there are older people that are in getting MO’s to pay bills. Unlike other places including large cities. the postal employee’s will help them file out the bills and the MO’s and anything else they need which is most of the time goes beyoned what they are required to do. It’s the small staions that do the most good. The large city PO’s don’t care about the people. One clerk told me that she will only do the required and nothing more as she did not want trouble by taking to long to work customers because her retire ment was coming up in a few years. Small PO’s are better also because they know most of the people that come in. they are not just another distraction.