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Got Mail? Go get it — the Postal Service has other plans
In the course of the debate, Congressman Ross explained that he and his co-sponsor on the House bill, Darrell Issa, did not want to dismantle or privatize the Postal Service. “We want to save this institution,” said Ross. “There are many ways we can do this. We don’t have to cut rural post offices. We don’t have to reduce the service delivery.”
Ross even seemed to back off of the plan to eliminate Saturday delivery, although, he noted, “moving from six-to-five day is overwhelmingly favored by the public,” as indicated by a recent NY Times survey. (12 minutes into the tape)
“But before we go to six-to-five,” suggested Ross, “let’s go from door-to-door to curb. That will save anywhere from $3.5 to $5 billion a year. Only 25% of postal recipients receive their mail door-to-door. The rest of them receive it either in cluster boxes, PO boxes, or at the curb. That right there is a tremendous savings that I think is a good way to go about it.”
Ross thus put closing post offices and five-day delivery on the back burner and moved the delivery point issue right to the front. The days of having your mail delivered to your door or even your curb may be coming to an end. The future is in cluster boxes.
It’s a different version of “the last mile” strategy — that’s when FedEx and UPS don’t want to incur the expense of delivering right to your home, so they hand off the parcel to the Postal Service. The difference is, with this new “last mile” strategy, it’s the Postal Service who’s doing the hand-off, and guess who’s going to be covering the last stretch of getting the mail to your house?
Full post (good historical context): http://www.savethepostoffice.com/got-mail-go-get-it-postal-service-has-other-plans
Ross even seemed to back off of the plan to eliminate Saturday delivery, although, he noted, “moving from six-to-five day is overwhelmingly favored by the public,” as indicated by a recent NY Times survey. (12 minutes into the tape)
“But before we go to six-to-five,” suggested Ross, “let’s go from door-to-door to curb. That will save anywhere from $3.5 to $5 billion a year. Only 25% of postal recipients receive their mail door-to-door. The rest of them receive it either in cluster boxes, PO boxes, or at the curb. That right there is a tremendous savings that I think is a good way to go about it.”
Ross thus put closing post offices and five-day delivery on the back burner and moved the delivery point issue right to the front. The days of having your mail delivered to your door or even your curb may be coming to an end. The future is in cluster boxes.
It’s a different version of “the last mile” strategy — that’s when FedEx and UPS don’t want to incur the expense of delivering right to your home, so they hand off the parcel to the Postal Service. The difference is, with this new “last mile” strategy, it’s the Postal Service who’s doing the hand-off, and guess who’s going to be covering the last stretch of getting the mail to your house?
Full post (good historical context): http://www.savethepostoffice.com/got-mail-go-get-it-postal-service-has-other-plans
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