Post Master General. Mail delivery days may have to be cut

Constantly writes articles on privatizing the USPS, but of course doesn't bother to explain just how privatizing would work AFTER it is broken up.

What incentive does a private for-profit business have in taking on the less lucrative an more sparsely populated rural portions of the US?

What incentive does a private for-profit company have in "cooperating" with it's competitors in accepting and delivering each others' mail, parcels, and packages in a timely manner??

What is to prevent ANY Joe or Jane Blow from accessing your mailbox if there is multiple competitors delivering junk and/or first class mail??

Do these CLOWNS have any idea of the logistical nightmare that would be created by breaking up the USPS piecemeal to the highest bidders??

Do they know the cost of providing safety and security for the US mail, through the Postal Inspection Service??


Anyone who thinks that the USPS, should be privatized, who is our LAST lifeline for communications, in a disaster or emergency is an IDIOT!!!!

I'm just curious.

It was ten miles of walking a day through "crack alley" and other less than desirable places, but I loved the route and the people on it. Got injured and put out to stud with 100% disability. I was the third straight carrier on that route that got full disability. It was a killer route.

Instead of subsidizing them with through first class postage overcharges?

I bet the USPO would be profitable if they just charged junk mailers what it costs to deliver their crap.

eliminating the huge profits the PO gets now from it, and the price of 1st class postage would be insane.

it's a no win situation.

subsidized by first class postage.

They would actually make money.

it comes presorted and machine addressed. It is handled from start to finish by machine. The only manual operation involved with bulk mail is the fellow carrying it to the delivery address. Most first class mail has to be handled by hand.

all the sorting in the world does not cancel the cost of transportation and delivery.

Note here that the USPO is trying to cut down on delivery days; the most expensive part of the process.

The sorting cost is trivial by comparison.

Then the mail can get caught in a loop in the process, and be delayed as it is needlessly handled over and over.

Accidentally routing fifteen thousand pieces to the wrong place does indeed cost money, in the form of time. What we try to do is avoid at all costs repeated handling of the mail within the plant.

Time is, after all, money.

have you ever seen how many clerks are in a distribution center?

I am a USPS automation clerk and have been for over a decade. All of us full timers in that section can reasonably be termed experts.

Far from being handled start to finish by a machine, standard mail does indeed involve a great deal of employee input. The "presort" part of "presort standard" is largely meaningless. For example, a very large amount of standard mail enters our facility "presorted" by the first three digits of the ZIP code, and often comes to us bundled into groups of address blocks. The mailers get a discount for doing so, but there's no real point to it; we have to unbundle it anyway to prepare it for our DPS operation.

The DPS operation- standing for "delivery point sequence"- is a two-pass operation at its end, but there are many steps involved before it gets to that final run. First, the mail gets sorted, by the tray, into in-house into groups corresponding to specific geographical areas. From there, it gets sorted on a DBCS machine to various other operations: computerized forwarding system (CFS), postal automated redirect system (PARS), and other methods. Each method has steps specific to the handling of the individual mailpieces.

I should note that "pure" three-digit labeled trays go directly from the dock (manual unloading of trucks), to desleeving (manual removal of the cardboard sleeve over the tray), to the DBCS, to the tray sorter, then to the final DPS operation.

All too often (particularly when local nonprofits are involved), standard mail doesn't have a barcode on the address, so it must be sent through the combined input/output subsystem (CIOSS), the actual address being read by a machine, and a two-bit (black/white) image of the piece being sent to a remote site where the information is coded by employees sitting at computer terminals. The resulting information is then sent back to our plant, where the coded information is translated into the barcode that's supposed to be there. One decision I personally have to routinely make is whether to send the mail to dispatch ("dear occupant" mail), or whether to send it to the ISS (input subsystem) operation on the CIOSS.

Once the mailpiece finally gets into the stream, it is sorted on a delivery barcode sorter (DBCS) into further groups, which then get two-passed through the DPS operation on those same machines. This sorts the mail into the delivery order for specific carriers on specific routes. All this, and please believe me when I say this, is a labor-intensive, time-consuming process involving a large number of steps that have to be executed correctly, in order, by us automation clerks. All too often, mailpieces don't immediately conform to the standards applied by the machinery, and have to be rerouted in-house to a flat sorter machine, or to manual letters (which is all handled by hand by manual clerks).

Virtually all first-class mail follows the exact same procedures, and requires the exact same handling, as presort standard mail. In-house, the only difference is the operation number we put into the machine, and the sortplan we load into the machine when we run the mail. In fact, first class mail gets an extra step- it gets sent through the automated facer/canceler/sorters (AFCS), which read the handwritten addresses, attempt to resolve them, and pass it off to a DBCS running a sortplan that can deal with the "new" barcodes on those mailpieces (this also involves sending an image to a remote site for address resolution, when necessary).

Basically, where I work, the "presort" part of "presort standard" only means, "this mail is only for the 490/491 zip codes". "Presort" doesn't really mean anything other than that, and it's not nearly as convenient for us employees as many seem to think it is. Even with presorted standard mailings, Michigan still gets mail destined for Florida, and this is likely also true in every postal distribution center.

I'm going to have nightmares of my days at the post office now :cry:

are you talking about the mailers themselves, or what we do in the plant?

When a company mails the stuff they presort it like you said by zip etc.. That way the clerks on Tour 3 (I'm going back to my days here) skip the step of sorting each piece by zip and it goes to wherever it goes to on the trucks etc already bundled by the mailer.

When I worked Tour 1 - that's where we sorted by town then route of all the stuff that came into our area. That sounds like what you do and you are correct that you still have to open those bundles and sort for the carrier.

I go back to the days of the LSMs.. LOL

Either way - I don't miss it :D

we do the directs to dispatch now, too. Here's how it's set up in my building:

Tour 2 - days - prepwork, desleeving, etc
Tour 3 - afternoons - SCF, flats, tray sorting, bundles, tabber, collection mail, priority, PARS, early dispatch, manual letters
Tour 1 - overnight - DPS & dispatch, "hot" tray breakdown, flats

All tours - dock

The vast majority of "presorted" mail we get is only presorted by the first three digits. I think the resaon for this is the DPS operation; even if they're bundled by carrier route, they still have to be run on the DPS sortplan.

They want us to try to DPS s much as possible now, which means we have to at least try to run mail on the DBCS that we're pretty sure won't survive the machine in the first place. But apparently, postal managers are more interested in "numbers" these days than they are in actually getting the mail out the door in one piece. :eyes:

Let me tell you this story. I went through the supervisor program and went to tour 3 to run a group where I really didn't know anyone. Everything was going great until one of the other supes told me they had to see how I'd handle confrontation. uh.. everything is going well here, why would I do that? They told me who to go and pick on to create a confrontation - I refused and went back to my job the next week. Smartest decision I ever made.

I bet things have changed so much since I left (I went out on disability after a car accident) I bet I wouldn't recognize the machines or just about anything there anymore.

:hi: :yourock:

Are you guys doing "Tour Compression" at your plant too?

My fellow Mail Processors and I WERE on Tour 2 sorting standard mail on the DB's. The new incoming plant manager implemented the Tour Compression Plan at our plant, you know what I'm talking about? The nationwide plan that USPS Headquarters has denied is a nationwide plan? That one? The one designed to save money by paying everyone night differential and Sunday premium? Yeah, that one...

misused or damaged. i had the pleasure of counting it & watching it be destroyed. the first time i destroyed enough stamps to buy my house ( 27,000.) the p o pays for that!:wtf:

to get my credit card offers and letters from charities and political groups wanting money! I'll have to get a bigger mailbox if they're going to deliver multiple days all at once.

I'll bet we'll find all SORTS of SWAG and golden parachutes tucked away in a desk or two.

Sorry -- if you want to cut expenses, start at the TOP.

In fact, I can't think of any postal manager who does any actual honest work. This is true for supervisors up. The only people contractually allowed to handle the mail- and by this I mean including even touching the containers the mail is in- are the people who get paid the least.

Not that we aren't paid well; we are, but those who don't actually handle the mail get paid quite a bit more than we workers do. Carriers get the best pay among the regular, nonmanagement employees, though... and they bloody well deserve it.

goes back at least twenty years.

The only thing I mail now is my electric bill which I cannot find a better way to pay.

My car note and my rent are the only things I still mail a paper check for.