Improvement isn't what it used to be at the USPS

[Chrispy]

Your mail system in the US is way better than ours for sure. You even have your residential mail boxes all a standard size and placement/height don't you? Or was it like that once?

We have your FEDEX here and my Mouser orders from the US get here in unbelievably fast time.

Hadn't heard that about mail boxes, there's quite a variety out there I've seen and used. Sometimes a slot with a basket behind it, sometimes a box on a post (like I have now....across the street with several neighbors' all grouped together but no two I think are exactly the same). Fedex and UPS can do a good job, they can also do a very poor job. I've watched Fedex grow from a limited courier service to what it is now, and no doubt its impressive, but you pay for it, too....altho big customers get much better rates of course than an individual could negotiate.

 

[restorer-john]

EDIT: well they do have standards which do include having a Parcel sized mailbox. As well as mounting heights, but apparently such is often ignored. If you are close no one complains I guess.

https://www.mailboss.com/guide-usps-mailbox-regulations/

What's entertaining in that link is all the arguing further down on that page by people complaining about the van hitting their mailbox etc.

 

[mansr]

We have your FEDEX here and my Mouser orders from the US get here in unbelievably fast time.

Fedex and UPS get things from the US to the UK in fewer days than USPS takes weeks.

 

[jhaider]

Since DeJoy has taken over the service has gotten more unreliable.

In one respect we’re lucky he’s so incompetent, given that the main reason he was chosen by the orange barbarian was voter suppression. He tried but his efforts were fortunately insufficient. Hopefully we can toss him out soon.

 

[Jim Matthews]

The Postmaster General serves at the pleasure of the USPS Board of Governors. There are three vacancies; once filled, they may ask for DeJoy's resignation.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/biden-nominates-3-members-to-usps-board-of-governors/

 

[ta240]

I want to know just what USPS, UPS and FedEx are charging the big companies like Amazon etc. because it seems like they are in a race to the bottom for their rates and are trying to make it up on the backs of the little guys.
A one pound box to a rural address in some places by UPS can cost nearly $20 now.
They all instituted size based charges that can make it crazy expensive if the box you are sending is just an inch too large. Meanwhile the huge companies still send things in boxes that are greatly oversized from what they need so they seem to be exempt from those charges.

 

[HiFidFan]

I want to know just what USPS, UPS and FedEx are charging the big companies like Amazon etc. because it seems like they are in a race to the bottom for their rates and are trying to make it up on the backs of the little guys.
A one pound box to a rural address in some places by UPS can cost nearly $20 now.
They all instituted size based charges that can make it crazy expensive if the box you are sending is just an inch too large. Meanwhile the huge companies still send things in boxes that are greatly oversized from what they need so they seem to be exempt from those charges.

Yeah. The special deals, breaks, carve outs, etc. that the big corporations get at the expense of the little guy is quickly getting old. And they're not even trying to hide it anymore. Someone mentioned Capitalism earlier. This isn't Capitalism. Not even close.

But, in the words of the late great George Carlin; "nobody seems to notice, nobody seems to care"

 

[KR500]

Current Postmaster De Joy is a CEO of a large mail order business that is in direct competition with the countries national mail that has been around for some time now.
A conflict of interest like most other appointments in the last 48 months.
The previous Postmaster was forced out by political appointees.

 

[Destination: Moon]

Just like the Environmental PROTECTION Agency was run by coal industry and fossil fuel shills and our National Weather, Oceanic service was hijacked by the bloody Weather Channel.... The damage from the past four years is astounding

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/feat...ead-weather-agency-spent-30-years-fighting-it

 

[Destination: Moon]

In one respect we’re lucky he’s so incompetent, given that the main reason he was chosen by the orange barbarian was voter suppression. He tried but his efforts were fortunately insufficient. Hopefully we can toss him out soon.

The wet dream of every CEO - you get to lead one of your biggest competitors - without any meaningful compensation or penalty from its success or failure..... Running it into the ground is obviously the mission

 

[Blumlein 88]

What's entertaining in that link is all the arguing further down on that page by people complaining about the van hitting their mailbox etc.

When I was a child we lived in the apex of a funny 5 way intersection. A drunk down the street knocked over our mailbox 3 times driving home drunk from a local bar. My father used the axle housing from a 1940 Ford to mount his mailbox. Box was a bit low and 40 inches of this were below ground. He also dug the hole large and filled it with concrete. Next time it tore threw the floorboard of the drunk's Chrysler Belvidere and hung the car on its rear axle with one wheel off the ground. The drunk could not go on and my Mom called the sheriff. He was too drunk to walk. Nobody mentioned the mailbox post wasn't legal.

A couple years later they were moving a house down that street. They came and told everyone they were going to knock down all the mailboxes doing so, but they would replace them. My Dad tried to explain they might not knock his down they should cut it with a torch instead. They didn't listen. The framework the house was on did bend it way over, but didn't pull it out of the ground. The house began to slide on the metal beams as it kicked up that corner. The house got hung in the power lines and jerked them down. It never did pull the post out of the ground. They stopped and had to get a torch to cut it. Of course my Dad complained the mailbox post they replaced his with was too flimsy. We moved away from there not long after anyway.

 

[Ron Texas]

The postal service is a hopeless mess. It can't make needed adjustments in it's business model without an act of congress. I am finding lots of mail never gets to it's recipient. It's burdened with subsidized rates for bulk mail. Do I really need the latest Talbot's catalog, and how many trees did they cut down to print it?

 

[restorer-john]

When I was a child we lived in the apex of a funny 5 way intersection. A drunk down the street knocked over our mailbox 3 times driving home drunk from a local bar. My father used the axle housing from a 1940 Ford to mount his mailbox. Box was a bit low and 40 inches of this were below ground. He also dug the hole large and filled it with concrete. Next time it tore threw the floorboard of the drunk's Chrysler Belvidere and hung the car on its rear axle with one wheel off the ground. The drunk could not go on and my Mom called the sheriff. He was too drunk to walk. Nobody mentioned the mailbox post wasn't legal.

A couple years later they were moving a house down that street. They came and told everyone they were going to knock down all the mailboxes doing so, but they would replace them. My Dad tried to explain they might not knock his down they should cut it with a torch instead. They didn't listen. The framework the house was on did bend it way over, but didn't pull it out of the ground. The house began to slide on the metal beams as it kicked up that corner. The house got hung in the power lines and jerked them down. It never did pull the post out of the ground. They stopped and had to get a torch to cut it. Of course my Dad complained the mailbox post they replaced his with was too flimsy. We moved away from there not long after anyway.

Totally awesome story- thanks for sharing it. I like your Dad- he sounds/ed like a great guy.

 

[Wombat]

The wet dream of every CEO - you get to lead one of your biggest competitors - without any meaningful compensation or penalty from its success or failure..... Running it into the ground is obviously the mission

Prior to it being privatized??

 

[Chrispy]

Current Postmaster De Joy is a CEO of a large mail order business that is in direct competition with the countries national mail that has been around for some time now.
A conflict of interest like most other appointments in the last 48 months.
The previous Postmaster was forced out by political appointees.

Hadn't heard about the mail order business, knew about him being with XPO Logistics for a while, then New Breed... https://www.forbes.com/sites/alison...ce-by-53-million-audit-found/?sh=105409d24663

 

[KR500]

Christy, thanks for the link. Interesting reading although revealing of his "business".
I mistakenly used the word mail order business in my earlier post. I had read that De Joy's business was direct mailing

 

[tonygrey]

The Postal Service’s financial difficulties stem from incompatible demands put upon it. USPS is mandated to be self-financing, but has limited ability to raise prices, cut services that do not generate sufficient revenue to cover costs, or expand into more profitable areas. It is required by law to deliver mail to every household at least six days a week regardless of mail volume. As a result of this universal service obligation, a drop in volume is not matched by a similar reduction in costs (USPS OIG 2016a). This long-standing problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, which caused a sharp decline in marketing mail (Bui and Sanger-Katz 2020; Marcos 2020). Though package volume has ballooned as more people shop online, especially during the pandemic, package delivery normally accounts for only about a third of Postal Service revenues (PRC 2020b).
Many problems can be traced back to the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006, which capped postage rate increases for first-class and bulk mail at the rate of inflation, required rapid prefunding of retiree health benefits, limited the Postal Service’s ability to expand into new business areas, and subjected the Postal Service to strict borrowing limits (Kosar 2009). Hamstrung by these constraints, the Postal Service’s capital spending has not kept pace with depreciation and amortization, and the Postal Service has been forced to erode its capital stock and cut services rather than invest for the future (USPS OIG 2016c).

 

[turkaturka19]

To anyone who thinks USPS is going down to drain due to their own incompetency, just so you know, they're being destroyed from within, and due to external pressures of other shipping companies, as well as demands from Amazon for example.

There's a whole disaster waiting to happen for folks who depend on med delivery for example (private shipping companies are simply indifferent on this matter, for all they care, you can go die in a ditch, as they're not mandated to ship anything that isn't to their preference).

Like most public services, the idea that they must generate a profit is complete and utter stupidity. In reality, public services are doing something wrong if they're generating a profit - in fact that is contrarian to the idea of why they even exist. They're supposed to be draining because alternatives from any other source are simply unviable (and any other source is a business, and businesses don't have reason to exist outside of profit initiatives).

Think about amenities like parks, or recreational public services.. The ideological idea of why they exist in the first place, is to produce a society that is high with well-being, as it has been shown that as a species, we produce better results the higher the well-being markers are. So for businesses that want better employees, they can't get it if you're going to have an oppressive life experience for said employees as they grow up and eventually reach the age of employment by businesses. The hope is that, with enough public investment (everyone's taxes as agreed upon the universal understanding of providing people a livable world to inhabit, and not some jungle that it's starting to trend toward regress in some parts of the world now), the people living and working can be more productive, and everyone enjoys the fruits of their work, their life, and the society they live in.

To then turn around with this retarded idea that public services ought now generate profits, is something a robber baron could only conjure, or just pure retards. The reason being, is it would be like having your cake and eating it twice. The public services are already aiming to produce better people to fill a society with content and highly functioning citizens. The fact that some people are saying a public service should also generate profit or be eradicated, would be conflating what a businesses should be doing... But also betraying through dishonesty, implying that a public service doesn't ultimately generate more profits in virtue of producing citizens that then go on to produce better products and generally well-being and lives for everyone at the end of the day.

This level of retardation is tantamount to expecting the act of washing your hands itself to generate profits, before the actual monetary profits are generated from someone cooking your food when folks go out on a night of dining..

Like why would the act of washing your hands be expected to generate a profit in of itself? Or why would the act of providing that water be expected to generate the profit, instead of simply businesses that rely on clean employee hands for the meals they will be selling on behalf of a business?

Straight up insane - and the fact that stuff like this goes completely ignored in discussions with adults is honestly unbelievable. This stuff not being caught by kids would be believable, but by grown ass men in the halls of legislature? Did any of these people attend school and absorb any knowledge beyond their workplace mandatory knowledge they needed for function for their occupation for goodness sake? Or are Libertarians all over societal thinking these days?

i like it

 

[Willem]

Postal services everywhere face challenges and have to adapt to the decline of traditional mail and the rise in parcel business. Our privatized Dutch once National Postal Service (now Post NL) does quite well. It has reduced mail delivery frequency a bit, automated much of the sorting, and obtained a large if not dominant share of the parcel delivery business. Sending a small parcel to somewhere else in the country only costs a few euros and usually gets there the next day. They do have competitors to keep them on their toes, but they continue to make a profit. Wages have declined, however.

 

[mansr]

Postal services everywhere face challenges and have to adapt to the decline of traditional mail and the rise in parcel business. Our privatized Dutch once National Postal Service (now Post NL) does quite well. It has reduced mail delivery frequency a bit, automated much of the sorting, and obtained a large if not dominant share of the parcel delivery business. Sending a small parcel to somewhere else in the country only costs a few euros and usually gets there the next day. They do have competitors to keep them on their toes, but they continue to make a profit. Wages have declined, however.

Bear in mind, thought, that the Netherlands is a small, densely populated country. Running a mail/parcel service profitably there is a lot easier than in the US.