USPS on the brink of Collapse ??

jomer

WOW

swartz1

time for some of the "other" companies to step up...

or are they looking for a bailout?

bishop

They are looking to cut Saturday deliveries ( maybe go to 3 days a week) and to close all unprofitable post offices ( they have been only permitted to cut some ). Congress has so far been reluctant to let them do all that. Those changes would allow them to reduce force ( more job losses in the economy). They still have an issue with pensions and medical, which is common to several industries at this point. It is like many issues facing Congress, folks want no bailouts and government to cut spending, but they want their 6 day deliveries and their local post offices too.

RonBurgundy

Should have been privatized decades ago.

Brick

Private companies can operate where they can maximise profits and remove service from areas that don't work for them. USPS serves the entire country regardless of profit or loss. There should be a compromise of employees freezing pay and benefits to current levels and a rate increase to at least break even. They are too big or important for us to allow them to fail.

hhmag70

It is the prepayment to future benefits that is casing the PO to lose money at this time. They have always made money at what they do, and would still be posting profits if it were not for the prepayments mandated by congress. This is the issue that must be addressed and concessions made to make this "problem" go away. I am for unions and believe they serve some legitimate purposes, but they must be willing to concede "some" in order to remain strong for future contracts to remain and benefit them in the long run.

cards651

Ralph said it best IMO - Kevin

WinPitcher

Let me get this straight this government of ours allows itself to get Trillions in debt, spends untold billions on nonsense, (war)
wastes untold billions and can't fund the the Post Office for it's people?

itzagoner

some will argue that overall they employ too many people and not enough is being done to tighten up procedures in order to impose cutbacks, including personnel.

i love my local P.O. and i think they're very good at what they do.

but, if i had a say in the management decisions, i'd play it much differently.

i've watched a transition there which includes a staffer selected specifically each day to stand by the line and answer questions and fetch forms. that's it. oh. restock shelves, too. no extra clerk at a window when they need to worry more about revenues than social obligations.

i've seen people get fed up and walk out.

yup.

they're losing. the Pittsburgh Pirates of business. about to be the Houston Astros.

Sportsamerica

The Unions in the Post Office have driven them to this point.

WFFL

Fed Ex and UPS contract with the USPS on a lot of deliveries in rural areas because they are not high profit for them. Most of the info here is all old news. They are trimming away/consolidating small PO's to save cash. Realize that a lot of these PO's have Postmasters that qualify for higher pay, and they do more than one duty...like a jack of all trades. They do want to get rid of the union. I can't remember the last time I actually received a genuine letter in the mail.

Yankees001

This is not surprising. Most Union Companies are hurting. Unions jack up wages and benifits. Companies loose money. When the company closes, people complain of job loss. If you want a job, take less money and make the company profitable.

FYI- Yes, I'm anti union. I've seen too many companies go out of business due to them. A few months ago an automotive company closed here, the union sucked the company dry. They moved to Elkhart, In.

Dave

mcolney1

<< <i>This is not surprising. Most Union Companies are hurting. Unions jack up wages and benifits. Companies loose money. When the company closes, people complain of job loss. If you want a job, take less money and make the company profitable.

FYI- Yes, I'm anti union. I've seen too many companies go out of business due to them. A few months ago an automotive company closed here, the union sucked the company dry. They moved to Elkhart, In.

Dave >>



Just like the free enterprise, non-union, Wall Street folks who have suck the nation dry, or non-union Hailliburton sucking the military dry...plenty of blame to go all around.

I would say that it's not the unions leading the PO to financial ruin, but many factors including the current forum of communication we're using right now. The PO is a necessity, but it must contract to stay useful/profitable. I'd be happy with PO delivery three times a week.

I'm fortunate to live in a large city where closing POs won't affect me much. I do worry about rural communities. The reality is that us city folks do prop up rural (costly) services, but I'm ok with that.

grote15

There are plenty of non-union companies that go bankrupt as well. Just look at the banking industries who needed gov't bailout money. Unions don't bankrupt a company--fiscal mismanagement and executive inefficiency do. The post office is just a victim of technology. I'd estimate that they handle 1/4 (if that) of the volume of letters they handled twenty years ago. No one send letters or mails bills anymore.

jerster

<< <i>This is not surprising. Most Union Companies are hurting. Unions jack up wages and benifits. Companies loose money. When the company closes, people complain of job loss. If you want a job, take less money and make the company profitable.

FYI- Yes, I'm anti union. I've seen too many companies go out of business due to them. A few months ago an automotive company closed here, the union sucked the company dry. They moved to Elkhart, In.

Dave >>



amen

CrazyMind2017

<< <i>Let me get this straight this government of ours allows itself to get Trillions in debt, spends untold billions on nonsense, (war)
wastes untold billions and can't fund the the Post Office for it's people? >>



O' beautiful, for spacious skies
But now those skies are threatening

RonBurgundy

Why fund an entity that has become partially obsolete? Throwing good money after bad. Between the private delivery services, cell phones & email, I can function just fine without them.

Maybe its just me, but I find the monetary costs associated with prosecuting a war to be functionally irrelevant. Argue all you want about the merits of the war(s) themselves, but citing the monetary costs is just another component of the narrative we're force fed by the MSM & their sidekicks every day. Just like the false narrative that "tax cuts cost money".

CdnOsfan

Up here in the GWN (Great White North), Canada Post is unionized with very good pay and nice benefits. However, it is pretty tough and takes a lot of time to get FT employment. They just ended a strike/lockout despite Canada Post posting a small profit every year for years. It baffles me how the USPS can operate at such a huge deficit! Service here is generally comparable to the USPS. You have to remember that Canada Post has to cover more ground as Canada has 1/10th the population of the US despite having a larger land mass. We have managed to get by with mail delivery only 5 days/week (no Saturdays) and this would be a start for you. We also operate a lot of independently owned "postal outlets" in drug stores, corner stores and there is even one in a department store nearby. You can do everything there that you can at a "real" post office and there are many of them. I realize people don't send letters anymore and that has hurt, however, parcel mail has had to help make up some of the difference. They also deliver quite a bit of junk mail, but the way I look at it, it helps keep rates down.

Look at how other countries do it and figure out what you need to charge to break even or make a small profit, doesn't sound like rocket science! I realize they have competition (FEDEX, UPS etc) but up here those guys are not cheap!

Sethro

<< <i>Why fund an entity that has become partially obsolete? Throwing good money after bad. Between the private delivery services, cell phones & email, I can function just fine without them. >>







The sentiment of this statement is exactly what's wrong with this country.

I. I. I.

Me. Me. Me.

yankeeno7

With the age of shopping on the internet, Im really surprised that companies like UPS, FedEx, and DHL dont open a few better and more visible "retail" offices with better prices to compete with USPS. Because they are not government owned, they are run more efficiently. There may not be more letters but there are a helluva lot more packages being mailed these days.

I know there are a lot less letters and bills mailed, but there are also a LOT more packages that go through the mail. I also know that they dont credit the local post offices for what people do at home. They make that money separate so its a lot harder for the offices to show profit. There must be some HUGE salaries in the top seats of USPS.

SidePocket

How many actual letters have you ever received in your lifetime, even before email? Not many for most people I suspect. On line bill pay is probably having the biggest impact as many people neither receive bills nor pay them through the mail anymore. Same with statements from your bank etc.

Even so I would say I receive more mail now than I did 20 years ago. I guess most of it goes right in the trash though, so maybe 3 days a week service would be plenty.

leadoff4

The truth is the truth. With email we no longer need the PO for letters, etc., etc. Newspapers will be obsolete before long too. Music CDs will go after that and the list goes on and on.

vladguerrero

<< <i>Let me get this straight this government of ours allows itself to get Trillions in debt, spends untold billions on nonsense, (war)
wastes untold billions and can't fund the the Post Office for it's people? >>



lol

kwtoz

People seem to be forgetting some very imortant facts.

The most important is that not everyone has a computer or email access, nor will they ever. I have an 89 year old Mother. When she can, she still writes letters. Many senior ciitizens don't have computer access. Some (my Mom included) have eye problems, so even a cell phone is out. Should we ignore an entire part of the population?

When was the last time you or someone in your famiily received a birthday card or some other greetings card in the mail? I don't see any evidence of Hallmark being in any trouble, so I know people still do. Those with children might find a biirthday check with one of those cards. Maybe some of you want "virtual cards". Not me!

hhmag70

Just some food for thought here; UPS is a Union operation that has the best contract of all the freight companies (Yellow/Roadway, ABF, etc.). When I was a teamster with Roadway during the 97 (I believe) UPS strike they were able to negotiate a better contract for themselves that paid nearly $2 more an hour than the LTL companies freight contracts. Unions in general are not the evil monsters people like to say they are.

There are companies who fail that are non-union and companies who thrive that are union. A much more intelligant look into the company must be made before blindly stating a union is at fault for a companies demise.

The good old govt. sets the max price the USPS can charge, that being said there is no way to compete with UPS/FedEx on an overall scale when they (UPS/FedEx) does not touch the letter portion of the business the USPS must handle with their hands tied. Let the govt. force the private companies to do what the USPS does at regulated prices and see how well they survive.


As is the case in every area of the world you are bound to find bad examples of everything. But in this pure comparison between the 3 named compaines - unions should not bare the full brunt of the blame as an easy excuse as to why the USPS has problems.


NO, I am not now, nor have I ever been an employee of the USPS.


edit for spaz like spelling

grote15

The most important is that not everyone has a computer or email access, nor will they ever. I have an 89 year old Mother. When she can, she still writes letters. Many senior ciitizens don't have computer access. Some (my Mom included) have eye problems, so even a cell phone is out. Should we ignore an entire part of the population?

Absolutely not, but that segment of the population is a very small one at this point. The average US household has multiple computers and the vast majority has at least one. Almost everyone I know pays all their bills on line and/or has gone paperless, which accounts for millions of pieces of mail that would otherwise be delivered through the USPS. There may be a slight increase in package delivery, but we in this forum probably have a skewed perspective on that as collectors since we receive many more packages than the average person. And most commercial stores and outlets don'y use USPS for shipping anyway.

Firehouse

When the Republicans and Bush controlled everything they tried to privatize the post office. (Good or bad I don't know.) They could not get it done. They took a different approach. How do you get rid of something. You defund it. Bush and the Republicans passed a MANDATE that the post office pay 7.5 Billion $s per year into a pension fund that was already close to 80 billion $s overfunded. Yes Overfunded. This was ontop of the contributions that employee and employer already made. This mandate and with the mandate that money comes from the post office to fund all federal workers comp no matter if it is post office related or not, has bankrupted the post office. It has very little to do with the big union thugs or the greedy union employees. In fact you get rid of just the pension mandate of 7.5billion $s and the post office would have profitted over 300 million $ without the use of tax payer money. It would have made profit for many years past and many years in the future. How much money would the post office profit without the use of taxpayer money if you get rid of both mandates? WOW!!! Looks like a very profitable and well run buisness.

With that being said I also believe it is a good I idea to streamline by cutting Sat. service and closing some post offices. But once again this takes congress to actually do something not just the same BS rhetoric out of there pieholes. Will it get done? We shall see.

kwtoz

I'd like to see your fact source showing that just about everyone has computers.

I pay bills by MAIL. It's much easier not to make mistakes when I do it the tradiational way. Count me the exception if you want. It's the way that I choose to do things.

MeteoriteGuy

<< <i>When the Republicans and Bush controlled everything they tried to privatize the post office. (Good or bad I don't know.) They could not get it done. They took a different approach. How do you get rid of something. You defund it. Bush and the Republicans passed a MANDATE that the post office pay 7.5 Billion $s per year into a pension fund that was already close to 80 billion $s overfunded. Yes Overfunded. This was ontop of the contributions that employee and employer already made. This mandate and with the mandate that money comes from the post office to fund all federal workers comp no matter if it is post office related or not, has bankrupted the post office. It has very little to do with the big union thugs or the greedy union employees. In fact you get rid of just the pension mandate of 7.5billion $s and the post office would have profitted over 300 million $ without the use of tax payer money. It would have made profit for many years past and many years in the future. How much money would the post office profit without the use of taxpayer money if you get rid of both mandates? WOW!!! Looks like a very profitable and well run buisness.

With that being said I also believe it is a good I idea to streamline by cutting Sat. service and closing some post offices. But once again this takes congress to actually do something not just the same BS rhetoric out of there pieholes. Will it get done? We shall see. >>



Also, if the USPS could charge the government for its mail it has to move for free, Washington would not take so advantage of the system, and save them millions a year. This is something that has been going on for decades. The problem with the USPS has always been 99% Washington created.

The USPS is a great service and I am thankful we have them. Go mail some letters in another country or some valuables overseas and see how well that works. I have done it with meteorites for over a decade and always fear the necessity of the sale vrs the possible (and sometimes likely headaches) that come from it.


Of course congress will likely change the name of 100 post offices this year...one of the few things they can always agree to do. Which I if I remember right, cost an average of $250,000 a location.

pomobileclk

The Federal Govt has used the Postal Service as a cash cow for decades. It is very hard to be profitable when you start $5.5 Billion in the hole every year due to the Prepayments.

grote15

I'd like to see your fact source showing that just about everyone has computers.

See below. And that 78% of US households was based on a study done in 2007. Now, almost five years later, the % is probably close to 90% or higher.

% of Homes in US with a Computer

kwtoz

So what is your threhold of acceptance? What number of people is too few to care about not having a computer?

RonBurgundy

FYI, allowing private companies the ability to deliver letters, bills, & the like would give seniors & others MORE options, not less. It could very well be cheaper too.

hhmag70

<< <i>FYI, allowing private companies the ability to deliver letters, bills, & the like would give seniors & others MORE options, not less. It could very well be cheaper too. >>



If that was the truth, UPS & FedEx would be stealing that business now, but they cannot touch the price that congress has set for USPS to operate at.

MeteoriteGuy

<< <i>

<< <i>FYI, allowing private companies the ability to deliver letters, bills, & the like would give seniors & others MORE options, not less. It could very well be cheaper too. >>



If that was the truth, UPS & FedEx would be stealing that business now, but they cannot touch the price that congress has set for USPS to operate at. >>



I dont see UPS or FedEx being able to employ 6-10x more drivers and drop prices by 90%. If the private companies handled the mail, the only way I could see it working is if they went to weekly mail.

swartz1

there is a difference with having a computer and having internet access 24/7...

RonBurgundy

That's incorrect. Those carriers are forbidden by law from being in the business of letter delivery.

In fact, delivery of overnight letters via FedEx, etc. was not authorized by law until 1979.

Interestingly, the USPS has the power to suspend that law & allow competition in letter delivery, but we all know why they won't. Government monopolies are ten kinds of awesome.

hhmag70

<< <i>That's incorrect. Those carriers are forbidden by law from being in the business of letter delivery.

In fact, delivery of overnight letters via FedEx, etc. was not authorized by law until 1979.

Interestingly, the USPS has the power to suspend that law & allow competition in letter delivery, but we all know why they won't. Government monopolies are ten kinds of awesome. >>




We all know UPS & FedEx is just chomping at the bit to deliver those $.47 envelops. Please, keep drinking the Kool-aid.

grote15

So what is your threhold of acceptance? What number of people is too few to care about not having a computer?

You're missing my point. I'm not in favor of ignoring any sector of the population, however small. What I am saying is that the advent of the internet and home computers and on-line bill payment methods and paperless accounts and all the other forms of print media that the internet has supplanted has cut deeply into the volume of mail the USPS processes on a daily basis and is a contributing factor to their plight. Bookstores are almost obsolete for the same reasons. Technology is the common denominator.

RonBurgundy

You're assuming it would be FedEx or UPS who would do it. It might be a start up. We'll never know since the market is closed, so mock all you want, your assertion is just as unprovable as mine as long as the monopoly persists. In fact, yours is even less provable in light of the fact the current monopolist's business model is failing.

hhmag70

I am not mocking you, but with my lifes experience being invloved in the transport industry in general I can safely say that you will not find the answer you hope is out there. Forget the letter service and just use the package service to see where they rate on average between the players; USPS, UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. The shear volume to match the infrastructure in place that the USPS has cannot be touched by any new ventures. This is why FedEx joins with USPS to delivere packages as a saverate.

Now go take a letter to any company you choose and compare rates. Deregulation went out the window with the ICC in latter 70's/early 80's.

One company may deliver across the street cheaper than the USPS, but isolated examples are not seeing the big picture. It has to be an all in or nothing venture.

Downtown1974

Wow....for a minute I thought I was in the precious metals forum.

thriller13

This is why we have such a problem cutting government spending. Every service they pay for is used by a percentage of the population, even if its a tiny percentage. Congress wouldn't risk any cutting anything because no matter what it is, it will make at least one person that voted for them mad

yankeeno7

Even if those other companies cant take and deliver letters, they have drivers with routes that pass by thousands of homes every single day. I think some extra stops for multiple padded envelopes would be profitable. But then again, Im not in the transportation or delivery business so I might be talking out my ass. It just seems like a little common sense to me.