If you ran a business with $25 billion in losses over the last five years, $20 billion in annual losses projected in the coming years, and 80 percent of its locations losing money, do you think that your company would stay afloat?
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/05/03/morning-bell-is-the-postal-service-doomed-2/
GM? Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac?... Any questions
Everything the fed touches is doomed.
The feds will be printing raftloads of money to keep all their other stupid ideas afloat; why not the Post Office too?
At the beginning of every budget cycle for at least the last decade, the USPS has asked Congress to allow it to make eceonomy/efficiency changes. Congress has always refused. The Postal Service wants to close a bunch of small post offices and eliminate Saturday service. But Congress won't let them. The situation is getting worse since the volume of first class mail has significantly declined as e-mail volume has increased. The problem does not reside within the Postal Service. It's Congress. Who would have guessed?
KC
I imagine the same issues reside with USPS as in other .gov services, namely Rolls Royce benefit packages and private sector pay. Those alone will doom them or us if allowed to continue. I do applaud them for looking for ways to cut costs but it may be too little too late and in the wrong areas.
GM? Fannie Mae? Freddie Mac?... Any questions
Add to the list... Federal Government
I sent a money order to Pace Cars for a sweet Glock 20 SF.... Sure hope they stay open long enough to get the $ and FFL to him..... No really that was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the thread title.....
I have been wanting to fool around with a 10 MM for a LONG time..... The reloading components came yesterday..... Please keep the PO open for a few days longer
I sent a money order to Pace Cars for a sweet Glock 20 SF.... Sure hope they stay open long enough to get the $ and FFL to him..... No really that was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the thread title.....
I have been wanting to fool around with a 10 MM for a LONG time..... The reloading components came yesterday..... Please keep the PO open for a few days longer
The 20SF is sweet, 2nd. I love mine.
Is the Postal Service Doomed? As presently constituted - YES.
It is saddled with high costs over which it has little control. The unions have reduced their costs and the pension has been reduced as well. However, mail volume has fallen drastically with the advent of e-mail and other forms of communications.
Here's where the costs are:
- While the congress is calling for lower costs, it is unwilling to permit the USPS to close many rural post offices saying it would be a hardship for rural patrons to drive 25 or more miles just to pick up mail. No private sector business would continue to offer unprofitable service. One solution might be to offer rural service at a higher cost (say $2 per letter) to cover the higher costs. This higher fee would have to be applied to both outgoing and received mail, including bills and advertising "junk" mail.
- The USPS has to pay for postal worker pensions up front and not on an as-you go-basis, thus inflating operating costs-and impacting cash flow.
- Gasoline is a major expense and the USPS has no control over increasing costs. A business can just raise the price of a product, the USPS needs to get Congressional approval to do so.
- The USPS delivers (or drives by) every address in the US 6 days a week, regardless of whether a letter needs to be delivered. It needs to go to 3 or 4 times a week delivery.
- There is a direct correlation between raising stamp prices and loss of customers (and lower revenue), so just raising postage prices is not an answer.
The options are simple - either they cut costs (service), or get congress to add a subsidy.
As far as gasoline costs go, is the USPS exempt from fed gasoline taxes??
djs, you have any idea on that one??
The feds will be printing raftloads of money to keep all their other stupid ideas afloat; why not the Post Office too?
The biggest supporters of the USPS is the private sector (although it does not want to support it). Credit card and mortgage companies and the entire spectrum of advertising and marketing companies want to send mail, but do not want to pay for the costs. Their lobbyists have gotten some really cheap rates for the bulk mail.
As far as gasoline costs go, is the USPS exempt from fed gasoline taxes??
djs, you have any idea on that one??
I do not believe it is exempt from gasoline taxes. See Section 7-3.3.4 of the act establishing the USPS (see:
http://about.usps.com/manuals/spp/html/spp7_018.htm ) - State and Local Taxes This section says:
"7-3.3.4 State and Local Taxes
"State and local taxes means taxes levied by the states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, possessions of the United States, or their political subdivisions.
"Although the Postal Service, as an establishment of the federal government, is constitutionally immune from state and local taxes imposed directly on it, the applicability of particular taxes is a legal question often requiring the advice and assistance of Legal Counsel. The applicability of a tax in a postal transaction may depend on the nature of the tax and whether its legal incidence, as opposed to its economic burden, is on the Postal Service as purchaser. In many instances in which the Postal Service is not constitutionally exempt, it may take advantage of statutory exemptions provided by state or local law.
"Prime suppliers and subcontractors may not normally be designated as agents of the Postal Service for the purpose of claiming exemption from state and local taxes. Such designation, when appropriate, must be accomplished in the RFP, and only after coordination with assigned Legal Counsel."
In any event, gasoline costs are rising faster than any taxes collected.
djs,
Thank you. Sounds like they aren't exempt.
Wiergate, Texas, where I lease property, has a population of 599. It has an awesome new post office, staffed by three full time employees inside, and some contract workers that deliver mail. The demographics of this "populated place" (It's not even a town) explain everything.
At the beginning of every budget cycle for at least the last decade, the USPS has asked Congress to allow it to make eceonomy/efficiency changes. Congress has always refused. The Postal Service wants to close a bunch of small post offices and eliminate Saturday service. But Congress won't let them. The situation is getting worse since the volume of first class mail has significantly declined as e-mail volume has increased. The problem does not reside within the Postal Service. It's Congress. Who would have guessed?
KC
This--how could I run a business based on a model that I know is unsustainable yet I am not allowed to change?!
I sent a money order to Pace Cars for a sweet Glock 20 SF.... Sure hope they stay open long enough to get the $ and FFL to him..... No really that was the first thought that crossed my mind when I saw the thread title.....
I have been wanting to fool around with a 10 MM for a LONG time..... The reloading components came yesterday..... Please keep the PO open for a few days longer
The 20SF is sweet, 2nd. I love mine.
I could not fine a Model 20 SF locally but got my mitts on a Model 21 SF and knew the SF was enough difference to make the SF 20 quest a go.....
Wiergate, Texas, where I lease property, has a population of 599. It has an awesome new post office, staffed by three full time employees inside, and some contract workers that deliver mail. The demographics of this "populated place" (It's not even a town) explain everything.
That's nothing compared to Alaska where in addition to the costs of shipping mail up from the lower 48, you have the costs of air mailing everything from letters to groceries at greatly subsidized rates to the many villages off the road system.
Ahhhhh yes, good old bypass mail.
i don't really know what broadband is, but it appears to be spreading like wildfire. it will compete with snail mail, no doubt.
You could have the Canadian system. I sent a letter to Alberta. I live in Montana, near Great Falls. The very next day the letter was at the border. Three weeks later it was delivered to a town approximately 150 miles north of the Montana, Alberta border. That is the norm.
As far as closing the small post offices, I have some sympathy for those that don't want to lose their post office. It will be a serious hardship on many of the elderly. When your closest post office is 30 miles away, winter, bad roads, poor internet service. It is often the final nail in your communities coffin to lose the post office.
I know many will flippantly say, just move then. Easy to say when you're not being told to leave your home of 50 years. Unlike urbanites, many from small rural communities have a great loyalty to the place they live.
It will be a serious hardship on many of the elderly. When your closest post office is 30 miles away, winter, bad roads, poor internet service.
Don't forget about old or broken cell phones.
i totally agree with every word you say. but, please be aware, change is in the air, and it isn't all driven by Obama alone.
I heard about a group of elderly's down florida way, that we're soo weak, they couldn't even poke out the chad on their election ballot.
Ahhhhh yes, good old bypass mail.
I might sound like a cold hearted basterd, but anything that can help expedite transistioning those who confuse a subsistance lifestyle with a government subsidized lifestyle to paying their own way, I'm all for.
Heck, even if they stay on the dole, at least they can do so on the railbailt so we aren't paying extra to provide all those government services to remote locations that have absolutely no economic reason to exist.
Is the postal service doomed?
Until they do something about their unfunded liabilities, yea, pretty much
Hate to see it as I think they do a good job overall
Hate to see it as I think they do a good job overall
you obviously havent used them much lately......i send a couple thousand pieces a month and i can tell you, especially in the last 18 months, they have gone down the chitter....we have often even had to send first class stuff out 2 and 3 times to get it some place, the success rate of our newspapers getting to our subscribers is damn near pathetic....
from here the mail semi goes directly to Billings as thats our main hub.....i drop off our papers at the local post office at 1pm Wednesday afternoon....by 5am Thursday they are in Billings....Tuesday is about when the papers to our Billings subscribers hit their mail boxes
At the beginning of every budget cycle for at least the last decade, the USPS has asked Congress to allow it to make eceonomy/efficiency changes. Congress has always refused. The Postal Service wants to close a bunch of small post offices and eliminate Saturday service. But Congress won't let them. The situation is getting worse since the volume of first class mail has significantly declined as e-mail volume has increased. The problem does not reside within the Postal Service. It's Congress. Who would have guessed?
KC
The Post Office needs to be able to shrink to its demand level. I mean, we still have blacksmiths, but don't need so many anymore.
The fact is that with residential mail three days a week would be fine. Most of what I get is junk mail anyway. Bills in my house get stacked up until Saturday in any case, at which time I pay them.
All the USPS workers in my area work in slooow motion. Long lines and wasted time. No private sector business could handle customer service the way they do and remain in business. People get feedup with poor service and find another
form of delivery. Email, Fax and etc. USPS is dead...they have just not stopped breathering yet. Too much Union involvement.
The Post Office needs to be able to shrink to its demand level. I mean, we still have blacksmiths, but don't need so many anymore.
Yeah but the blacksmiths of today generally are small welding/machine shops. Not at all like the blacksmiths of 80+ years ago but incorporating modern tooling to deal with more than horse era needs.
Not only does the PO need to shrink to meet the level of demand, but they also need to morph into units that serve business and consumer needs, like maybe incorporating a Kinko's/Office Max/Starbucks into their locations and expand business hours to serve those who work 9-5 after they get off work.
well , I hope USPS can survive in some fashion...it would be danged inconvienent is these parts without it
up the rates , suspend Sat deliveries....there should be some way to reach a breakeven level
unlike some , I feel we have been getting good service in recent years....a letter mailed from the twin cities area will often get here overnight
I can order a small parcel from Midway in the morning , ship it Priority mail and get it in 2 days; and at a cheaper rate than UPS or Fedex
There are so many problems with the Postal Service its difficult to address all of them. A friend was in management with the Postal Service until he retired & made the following comments. The Postal Service gives preference to veterans (a good thing), but is forced to hire even those with obvious mental issues & finds it difficult to terminate others with obvious mental issues. Thus the term - Going Postal. The union is so strong that employees constantly late, frequently missing work, & unproductive are difficult to impossible to terminate. Higher management is over paid & usually unproductive. The higher in management one goes the more the position is based on political influence with the current administration. The favorite topic among management is benefits & retirement not improving service. No one wants to make decisions that could be the cause of criticism.
Just like the government!
Everything the fed touches is doomed.
Yep - because, while they're great at politics, they have NO CLUE how to run a business - and they don't care because it's OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY...
Rattler--
I use the post office a couple times a week. Send envelopes, flat rate boxes and letter mail.
Never had a problem
In today's USA TODAY, Friday 04/04/12, there was a front page article that show the USPS losing $36,000,000 PER DAY!
$36,000,000 x 365 = $13,140,000,000.
If you assume a 2012 population of 312M in the U.S., that is $42.12 lost per person, not including the 12M+/- illegals in the U.S.
The USPS needs to down-size to meet it's level of demand. If eliminating small POs and cutting back service to 5 days per week would help them balance the budget, I'd be OK with that.
Jeff
I haven't really had bad service from the PO. I mostly get my mail in a timely way and they have done a good job shipping for me personally
Part of my favorable view of the PO comes from the fact that as a Sales rep my territory ships hundreds or thousands of lines a day of UPS and FedEx and I know they are far from perfect.
I do wish they would have extended hours at locations. I wonder what the effect on business would be if we cut delivery to three days a week. Maybe half the routes would be MWF and the other half would be TThS.
Even though much is done via email today and some of the high value documents go FedEx, I suspect the PO (or some service like it) is probably required and might not be run at a break even or a profit and have to be subsidized.
It would be curious to see what kinds of Bids the federal Gov't would receive if they put out a RFQ/RFP for the USPS's services.
Rattler--
I use the post office a couple times a week. Send envelopes, flat rate boxes and letter mail.
Never had a problem
law of averages hasnt caught up with you yet....off the top of my head we send out about 7,000 pieces a month, both first class and periodical rate....
i understand i shouldnt expect great service for our periodicals given the discount rate but 5 days for the papers to hit the mail boxes on the next stop down the line is bullchit....i understand if it takes that long to get to some far corner of the US but the truck from here goes there without a stop....i also have subscribers that have not seen a paper in 3 months, they get our bills just fine but for some damn reason the post office cant get a newspaper to their house...or if they do get them they get 3 or 4 weeks worth in one day....WTF?
also its bullchit that i regularly have to send the same first class material 2 and 3 times to get it to where its supposed to go....
The question I have is:
Is it a service or a business?
There are a number of things that .gov does which will never break even.
Roads, bridges... etc.
So why do we expect the post office to?
Really
Snake
All the USPS workers in my area work in slooow motion. Long lines and wasted time. No private sector business could handle customer service the way they do and remain in business. People get feedup with poor service and find another
form of delivery. Email, Fax and etc. USPS is dead...they have just not stopped breathering yet. Too much Union involvement.
I leave the USPS office with my blood pressure up 20 points. Same with the license bureau & title division. I would love to move voting day to 4/16, then require all congress members to renew their drivers licenses and passports on the morning of the day they have to vote on govt spending measures.
FC
They could drop one or two days of service, or maybe severely restrict their hours on those days, and we'd all adapt just fine within a month of its announcement. It isn't rocket science!
Is the Postal Service Doomed? As presently constituted - YES.
It is saddled with high costs over which it has little control. The unions have reduced their costs and the pension has been reduced as well. However, mail volume has fallen drastically with the advent of e-mail and other forms of communications.
Here's where the costs are:
- While the congress is calling for lower costs, it is unwilling to permit the USPS to close many rural post offices saying it would be a hardship for rural patrons to drive 25 or more miles just to pick up mail. No private sector business would continue to offer unprofitable service. One solution might be to offer rural service at a higher cost (say $2 per letter) to cover the higher costs. This higher fee would have to be applied to both outgoing and received mail, including bills and advertising "junk" mail.
- The USPS has to pay for postal worker pensions up front and not on an as-you go-basis, thus inflating operating costs-and impacting cash flow.
- Gasoline is a major expense and the USPS has no control over increasing costs. A business can just raise the price of a product, the USPS needs to get Congressional approval to do so.
- The USPS delivers (or drives by) every address in the US 6 days a week, regardless of whether a letter needs to be delivered. It needs to go to 3 or 4 times a week delivery.
- There is a direct correlation between raising stamp prices and loss of customers (and lower revenue), so just raising postage prices is not an answer.
The options are simple - either they cut costs (service), or get congress to add a subsidy.
Any small town posdt office is staffed at 3 times the level a private employer would utilize.The mail is sorted and in a PO box by 9 AM but the employees stay for a full 8 hours.Then... they hire an outside cleaning service and yard maintenence.
They make Sweetheart deals with individuals to build them a building to their specs,and rent it from to guarantee a payout in 10 years,then keep paying the same rent.
The list goes on and on.
Sell the operation to Fred Smith[the Fed EX guy]and collect royalties from him.I can promise you that the average postal worker wouldn't be on Smith's payroll after 3 months and postage would go DOWN.
- While the congress is calling for lower costs, it is unwilling to permit the USPS to close many rural post offices saying it would be a hardship for rural patrons to drive 25 or more miles just to pick up mail. No private sector business would continue to offer unprofitable service. One solution might be to offer rural service at a higher cost (say $2 per letter) to cover the higher costs. This higher fee would have to be applied to both outgoing and received mail, including bills and advertising "junk" mail."
Funny as hell how UPS and Fed EX deliver to rural zip codes for the same price as their urban counterparts.
You have just GOT to be a government employee....defending the indefensible.
Does the post office still have a race car and racing team?
That's wise appropriation of funding, no?
How much is spent on other advertising? They hit the fricken superbowl a while back... not quite the cheapest advertisement available....
And for what?
What audience did they reach that wasn't already part of their "customer base"? Did it increase "business"? generate revenue?
Only government could be this f'ing stupid.
Besides that, how much corruption and pocket lining is going on? Are these more cushy jobs with unsustainable cadillac retirement plan?
Is the post office another public funded union?
Whatever it is, it's government... and government's broker'n a Greek check cutting machine.
Damn, I hope so!!!! They take forever to deliver packages and they lose everything but my bills! They always seem to arrive in a timely manner!! I also get a lot of my neighbors mail.
Sounds like a ringing endorsement for government health care.
USPS will be like the Local Libraries very soon. Defunct. Digital world will change things greatly.
not to defend USPS salaries , perks , and amount of staff , but as I mentioned , shipping of small parcels is actually cheaper via priority mail than UPS/Fedex , and usually faster ( at least from MidwayUSA to this location )
and Fedex as a replacement ?......forget it
back in
late Feb the local Fedex truck out of Watertown had a package for me , a machinery part I needed pretty bad.....according to tracking it was on the truck 4 days before they attempted delivery , because I live 2 miles off a hard surfaced road and we had a lousy 6 inches of snow on the ground
then the silly woman finally delivered on a day when it was thawing , greasy , and ten times harder going than the cold days
but our mailman showed up everday thru that period....Fedex as a repacement?....no thanks
USPS will be like the Local Libraries very soon. Defunct. Digital world will change things greatly.
Yeah, but what about the growing number of people ordering everything online? Hell, I order a good portion of my groceries on amazon.
Funny as hell how UPS and Fed EX deliver to rural zip codes for the same price as their urban counterparts..
Not for me. UPS or Fex X will cost about $40 to shop a small package to me from the lower 48. BT/DT.
The USPS would do a lot better if the Government (Congress) would keep it's nose out of their opperation. Seems to me that everything the government touches turns to crap.
Funny as hell how UPS and Fed EX deliver to rural zip codes for the same price as their urban counterparts..
Not for me. UPS or Fex X will cost about $40 to shop a small package to me from the lower 48. BT/DT.
Should the rest of the states subsidize Alaska by continuing to fund the USPS when we have better alternatives?
Funny as hell how UPS and Fed EX deliver to rural zip codes for the same price as their urban counterparts..
Not for me. UPS or Fex X will cost about $40 to shop a small package to me from the lower 48. BT/DT.
Should the rest of the states subsidize Alaska by continuing to fund the USPS when we have better alternatives?
Good question. I guess it comes down to how much the other states value Alaska. Cut the usps, and you'll see costs skyrocket,and services go away in Alaska. It might not matter for some, but many down south folks rather enjoy visiting Alaska, and utilizing what it has to offer.. without the costs being sky high.