The Postal Service needs our help. (1 Viewer)

It would truly be devastating to the economy if the postal service were to completely fail. I would expect the government to bail them out, but I don't think the company will get enough money. Not sure what will happen.
 
I wonder if they make money on the flat rate boxes? Somehow I doubt it.
I have been saying for years at a minimum they should switch to Monday Wednesday Friday delivery only.
 
There’s only three people that work in my post office, two of them are part time. There’s no delivery, we have to go to the PO to get our mail. I like it better than door delivery.
They should consider the neighborhood pickup spot and just quit house to house unless your disabled or need the special service. This is just my opinion.
Especially in these times when most (but not all) snail mail is advertisements, magazines, or copy’s of documents already paid but people want evidence.
 
Didnt they already bailout money in this latest package? Take the USPS behind the barn already.
 
I don't think Republicans or Democrats or both want to be blamed for the post office failing. I expect they will prop it up.
 
I had a Chanman cloth supposedly leave San Francisco on the 17th, no tracking update since the 21st that said it is transit to the next facility towards the final destination. At what point do I start to worry? :(
 
I wonder if they make money on the flat rate boxes? Somehow I doubt it.
I have been saying for years at a minimum they should switch to Monday Wednesday Friday delivery only.
They do really well on flat rate boxes. Those were the model that actually injected a ton of revenue into the post office. What's hurting the post office is the fact that they have to prepay their pension contributions like no other business has to do. If they didn't have to do that they wouldn't be in near as bad a position.
 
There’s only three people that work in my post office, two of them are part time. There’s no delivery, we have to go to the PO to get our mail. I like it better than door delivery.
They should consider the neighborhood pickup spot and just quit house to house unless your disabled or need the special service. This is just my opinion.
Especially in these times when most (but not all) snail mail is advertisements, magazines, or copy’s of documents already paid but people want evidence.

My city is like this, with the neighborhood spot.

We do not have mailboxes on our house.
Each neighborhood has a pick up spot with locked mailboxes in one spot at the edge of the neighborhood.
Each location has like 100 mailboxes, and also has a few large drop boxes for packages.

On my way home from work, I stop at the edge of my neighborhood, unlock my personal box to find my regular mail and usually a special key for the large lockbox if I have a package. I then open the large lockbox to get my MFRB of chips (lol). Then I close it and drop that special key in a slot so they reuse that key/lockbox combo tomorrow. Hopefully for me cause I got more chips lol.

It's a lot faster for the postal worker as they don't need to really enter the neighborhood. They just stay at the edge, open multiple boxes at once with a special key. Put everyone's mail in. Move on to the next neighborhood.

I sign up for email notifications. That way I get notified if I have any taxes/duties to pay, pay them online, and my package still gets dropped off at the neighborhood pickup location.

The other day my wife had a brainfart and dropped our personal mailbox key in the slot lol.
Next day I called "did you guys find a key in there? Yeah? That's us lol".

BTW, in Canada we get nothing free.
That's where your USPS is losing a crap ton of money.
We pay for envelopes, bubble envelopes, boxes, tape, everything.

(Well, I would have to pay for those, if I didn't have a 10 year stockpile of USPS supplies. Thanks!)
 
My city is like this, with the neighborhood spot.

We do not have mailboxes on our house.
Each neighborhood has a pick up spot with locked mailboxes in one spot at the edge of the neighborhood.
Each location has like 100 mailboxes, and also has a few large drop boxes for packages.

On my way home from work, I stop at the edge of my neighborhood, unlock my personal box to find my regular mail and usually a special key for the large lockbox if I have a package. I then open the large lockbox to get my MFRB of chips (lol). Then I close it and drop that special key in a slot so they reuse that key/lockbox combo tomorrow. Hopefully for me cause I got more chips lol.

It's a lot faster for the postal worker as they don't need to really enter the neighborhood. They just stay at the edge, open multiple boxes at once with a special key. Put everyone's mail in. Move on to the next neighborhood.

I sign up for email notifications. That way I get notified if I have any taxes/duties to pay, pay them online, and my package still gets dropped off at the neighborhood pickup location.

The other day my wife had a brainfart and dropped our personal mailbox key in the slot lol.
Next day I called "did you guys find a key in there? Yeah? That's us lol".

BTW, in Canada we get nothing free.
That's where your USPS is losing a crap ton of money.
We pay for envelopes, bubble envelopes, boxes, tape, everything.

(Well, I would have to pay for those, if I didn't have a 10 year stockpile of USPS supplies. Thanks!)
I'm telling you, the USPS doesn't lose money on flat rate shipping. The price of the materials is figured into the flat rate shipping price. It costs pennies to make those boxes envelopes. The USPS makes good money on flat rate shipping.
 
I'm telling you, the USPS doesn't lose money on flat rate shipping. The price of the materials is figured into the flat rate shipping price. It costs pennies to make those boxes envelopes. The USPS makes good money on flat rate shipping.
Yup. Issue isn't USPS, they do fine. It's that they need to have the pentions covered for 75 years. That, in turn, requires a base pile of money that's nearly impossible to cover.
 
There’s only three people that work in my post office, two of them are part time. There’s no delivery, we have to go to the PO to get our mail. I like it better than door delivery.
They should consider the neighborhood pickup spot and just quit house to house unless your disabled or need the special service. This is just my opinion.
Especially in these times when most (but not all) snail mail is advertisements, magazines, or copy’s of documents already paid but people want evidence.

I'm sure this works great in a town with a population of 7.
 
Yup. Issue isn't USPS, they do fine. It's that they need to have the pentions covered for 75 years. That, in turn, requires a base pile of money that's nearly impossible to cover.
In reality flat rate shipping is only really beneficial for people shipping heavy objects (like poker chips) because if you're shipping lighter objects regional flat rate is quite a bit cheaper. But when you're shipping 10-30 pounds of poker chips the flat rate boxes can't be beat for value. I'm a big advocate of the USPS (helps that I have relatives that work there but I still think the USPS does a great job)
 
In reality flat rate shipping is only really beneficial for people shipping heavy objects (like poker chips) because if you're shipping lighter objects regional flat rate is quite a bit cheaper. But when you're shipping 10-30 pounds of poker chips the flat rate boxes can't be beat for value. I'm a big advocate of the USPS (helps that I have relatives that work there but I still think the USPS does a great job)

There are quite a few packages that I can ship with the USPS for about $15 that FedEx and UPS would charge me $40+ for.
 
There are quite a few packages that I can ship with the USPS for about $15 that FedEx and UPS would charge me $40+ for.
I'm just as bad as anyone when it comes to bitching about a lost or delayed package, but in reality when you think of the logistics of moving billions of packages a year they do a pretty bang up job. All the carriers really. I'll always stump for the USPS though.
 
For $0.55, the post office will carry my letter to the most remote corner of the USA in a couple of days. That seems like an exceptional bargain to me. Fed-ex charges $8.50 to $11.00 for a similar service - and not to every corner of the USA without the post office handling the final few miles. Plenty of other folks here have sung the praises of flat rate shipping and poker chips.

There are a host of things that assume a functioning post office. This is much more the case in rural America, than in unban centers. Wealthy people would be inconvenienced by the loss of postal services. People in remote corners of the country, people without a bank account would be devastated. The flip side of this is true as well - if your customers use the post office to buy your stuff and pay your bills - then you too need the post office.

Over the last few years, the post office's operations are "profitable" in the current year, but the cash flow is no where adequate to set aside the costs of prior pension and health care promises.

Congress mandated that the Post Office set aside additional funds each year to protect the interests of current and past employees. It seems to me that forcing the post office to "privatize" isn't going to do anything good for those legacy liabilities. We should know how this works in the private sector. You split the operations into one corporation and the pension + medical in another. Then you bankrupt the pension + medical corporation and viola! no more liability. It does suck to be the worker though.

I never fully understood the exceptional animosity towards the Post Office. Even back in the days when I was highly politically active, the Post office was one of the "top ten enemies of the free market" and needed to be destroyed.

I suggest being careful what one wishes for. Once we break the Post office, it might prove difficult to put back together -=- DrStrange
 
There's no scenario where the USPS goes under. Trump just wants to get back at Bezos so he wants Amazon to pay them more money. But there's no way the US govt is going to let them just die off. They'll get bailed out if needed. 100%. Maybe prices will go up, but they're not going away. You can take that prediction to the bank. Allowing it to do so would be one of Trumps biggest blunders, and that's no small feat. As soon as polls come in at 80/20 against him not bailing them out, he'll cater.
 

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