“I saw a quip in a recent article mentioning a law Congress passed that hamstrings the USPS from directly bidding against private enterprises like Fedex and UPS. Supposedly, Amazon plays that to their big advantage.”
The “real problem” with the USPS is that they are now having, by law, to pay into their employee retirement plan in sufficient amounts to allow them to distribute benefits to their retirees. Their “retirees” are the biggest problem the USPS faces. As the picture changed for the use of “government-mandated mail service, the USPS was very slow to react to their real employee needs. At it’s zenith, the USPS had 780,000 employees (1988), but as we all know government agencies exist primarily to give unneeded jobs to people who will vote Democrat. As a consequence, right now the USPS probably has twice as many employees as it really needs. Current employment is 503,000 and it is going down. I have read that to suport it’s current business, it should be half of that number. The USPS is where a number of retired military people go so they can double dip on their retirements.
The other thing that should pi$$ you off is that rather than buying mail service trucks from the automakers, they want to design a new “special truck” that will supposedly “last longer” at a projected cost of $60,000 per unit. Just hope our military has wiser planners.
“The other thing that should pi$$ you off is that rather than buying mail service trucks from the automakers, they want to design a new “special truck” that will supposedly “last longer” at a projected cost of $60,000 per unit. Just hope our military has wiser planners.”
The current USPS delivery vehicle is the aluminum bodied LLV built by Grumman with pickup truck running gear from the automakers. Those trucks went into service in the mid 1980s and you still see them in use. 30 year lifespan is probably a fair return on investment.