It’s the biggest civilian employer after Walmart, but apparently the U.S. Postal Service is not too big to fail. Today, the Postal Service said that without Congressional action, it could be bankrupt by the end of next year. “We will continue our relentless efforts to innovate and improve efficiency. However, the need for changes to legislation, regulations and labor contracts has never been more obvious,” Postal Service Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett said in a statement.
The venerated 235-year-old institution is deep in the red. It lost $8.5 billion last year, shedding 105,000 jobs. In the next ten years, the agency could lose a whopping $238 billion.
Could The Post Office Really Fail?
Could it really be that the second oldest agency in America, created by Benjamin Franklin to help bind the nation together, is in danger of going out of business?
At a Post Office in the Washington, D.C. area, customers envisioned a world with no Postal Service.
“I foresee that they could potentially become irrelevant or obsolete in the future,” one woman said.
While not obsolete, mail carriers are certainly carrying less and less mail.
In the 2010 fiscal year, mail carriers delivered 6 billion fewer pieces of mail than in 2009. Full story in ABC.
I think that a great boost for post office revenues would be to quadruple the price of sending junk mail.
They did it to themselves they built UPS and Fedex.
Can someone explain this to me
UPS or FEDEX will come to your block come to your house walk up to your door knock if no one is home come back later still no one home they will come back a third time all for a package that cost $4.50 to ship and still they managed to make net $2.5 billion last year
On the other side is the post office they come to your block to deliver 100 pieces of mail ( 20 houses 5 pieces each )and yet they manage to loses billion a year and expect a bail out
If anyone needed proof as to why government run anything doesn’t work well here it is
This is what our healthcare will look like when the government takes it over as well. (ObamaCare)
Thank you to all the drones that continue to vote for liberals (especially in NY)
I personally hate the post office.
1. To many rules/regulations to ship a basic package- half the boxes i mail out get denied at the post office & not accepted to ship, because i need customs forms, package invoice-receipts(what is that?) to prove the true value of the items inside….
2. To many silly forms for the most basic items to be mailed out. Silly forms & stickers, and labels that must accompany the box. To ship a basic item to Europe, i fill out a bunch of forms, and i watch the post office employee, stamp each copy of the form with a SEAL OF THE POST OFFICE. i watch her place a blue UNITED STATES POST OFFICE sticker on my box, i watch her wrap my box with PRIORITY package tape, i watch her attack some green card looking tracking info to the box & receipt, and i watch her print out a bunch of useless papers.
3. 76yr old ladies that move slower then snails. that keep the lines backed up often out the door- going to the post office is a minimum 45min affair. -oh, and those same 76yr old ladies stair at every customers as if he/she is the next personal mailing a bomb. i hate being interrogated and looked at like a criminal.
4. The tracking is extremely slow to update, and very inaccurate.
forget the fact that 15% of the mail that i ship out gets lost, torn, or never delivered, or time sensitive documents get delivered late, and past the date that i paid for!
most of the losses is due to the billions and billions of dollars going into the health and retirement benefits for the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of retirees. They simply cannot sustain that, regardless of how much cutting back and innovating they do.
to mr Yid
good point ,but i wouldnt call liberals drones as robotic they can be. because drones are way more accurate, yet liberals do way more damage.
Mr. Conservative:
I could not agree with you more. It’s disgraceful & it’s like that all over the country. I was once in South Carolina. I went to the Post Office to mail a letter and the scene was IDENTICAL to the typical scene at the Clifton Avenue branch.
Question? Can anybody tell me why the Post Office in Lakewood opens at 9:30?!?!?! Have you ever heard of any legitimate opening at 9:30?
When they stop paying the crazy salaries then maybe they will turn a profit. The head of the Lakewood office ( I forget the actual title) makes over $300,000 a year.
There are quicker way now everything is online instead of Mail it to PO which they are not doing faster as they could… Then people would use them…
lakewood postmaster does not make over 300k per year. get your facts right before posting your garbage!!! P.S. you`re a (moderated).
Postal employees get the eternal benefits that FEDEX and UPS (and the taxpaters that fund it) could only dream of and they have a huge workforce. Is it any wonder they can’t turn a profit or even stay solvent?
I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend that the post office workers also get a car to drive while working! Oh my!
Honestly, if the US-Postal Service wants to stand tall & proud, and exist in a world where E-Mail/Facebook Messaging, UPS, Fed-Ex, and Private Shipping Stores are their biggest threat- they need to modernize or admit defeat.
Snail-Mail is slow enough, add in slow un-friendly employee’s, add in ridiculous rules & regulations, silly protocols(attaching silly stickers/tape/-time consuming propaganda), and get their tracking up to date with accurate results.
here is a hint: install 2-3 easy to understand, touch-screen automated kiosks at each post office. To save time, each kiosk will use the bar-code on your NJ driver’s License to scan SHIPPER information, and then you simply type in SHIP TO info, weigh your item, and choose country/(state if US) to where its going. then you choose your 4(max) shipping options.(5-7day standard/2-3day express/1-2day express/over-night). final menu can have add-on features, like insurance, etc. Every package will get tracking info free. THEN YOU HIT BUY, AND PAY WITH A CARD. AND YOU GET 1 LABEL TO PUT ON YOUR BOX & YOUR DONE.
-seriously if quick check can install 3 touch screen computers to order sandwiches, i think the post office can pull this off as well!!!
very simple the government does not kmow how to run a business !! look at evry government institution and they are in trouble , as pointed out already what do you think is going to happen to health care now that they are in control?? going to be a disaster !!!
what benefits? other than a retirement pension !
they open at 9:30 so that they can be open until 7PM without paying too much o/t. Each letter carrier used to deliver to between 600 and 700 houses a day. I think that was because of the volume of mail and how far you can get on your route, alot of which was walking. I know now, that I don’t get nearly as much mail as I used to. Maybe through attrittion, they can reduce the number of carriers. A lot of locations have cluster boxes now so the carrier does not have to walk as much. And maybe stop Saturday letter delivery, with the exception of parcel post and overnight mail and the window at the post office. They should open a window up on Swarthmore also. At least there you can park your car. Just my 2 cents.
The post office in the industrail park in lakewood makes no sense at all , it is not manned so all you can do is drop off mail the has the correct postage on it. I never go to the lakewood post office after I waited in Line for more than a half hour ,go to Brick ,more parking and more than one person to assit you there.
have not paid a bill with snail mail in years ,its safer quicker and cheaper to do it via online. the post office has not kept up with technology. If they keep doing things the same way they will be just like the tele-graph key ~ non existant