Going Postal

[Ponzio]

Interesting video about some general misconception about the US Postal Service.

Especially after Mr. DeJoy's blatant attempt to hobble the USPS, to mitigate mail-in voting, never mind the previous laws passed to deregulate the USPS.

 

[Trebdp83]

Delivering Democracy... and Amazon on Sunday.

 

[lovinthehd]

I guess there's a lot of butt hurt repubs who have had a problem with the USPS and never had one with Fedex or UPS or DHL etc? Let alone Joy's old Xpo Logistics outfit....

 

[Ponzio]

Yeah, it’s hard to understand why there’s all this antagonism toward the USPS by republicans and some democrats, even before DJT came along and his attempt to hinder mail-in voting in this last election.

I know they’re fans of de-regulation and some have a vested interest in seeing UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc. succeed but at what cost to the people in the hinterlands, since they’ve plainly stated they have no plans to cover those areas, now or in the future, since it's not cost effective.

I find their claims that they want to make the USPS competitive & stand on their own two feet vs. other carriers laughably ironic. If so, why not hobble those carriers with the same set of rules of pension funding for their employees and having to go to Congress and the Senate to request price hikes and whatnot for their services?

That’s ‘free’ enterprise? All I see is a fixed outcome/game. Where one side has one set of rules it has to abide by to conduct business and the others can do whatever they want.

I own stock in UPS, and should benefit from it, but even I can see this is totally unreasonable and patently unfair for the USPS. Yes in years past they were mismanaged to a degree and reforms were needed but making them fight the competition with one hand tied behind their back is idiotic. And not in keeping with their blind worship of their supposed revered god, 'capitalism'.

 

[slipperybidness]

With the emergence of the e-economy and online sales, the entire shipping industry has been revitalized in the last ~15 years or so.

There was a time when the outlook was grim for USPS, but those days are long gone.

 

[KEW]

My daughter graduated in May and is starting her independent life.
I brought her the stack of mail (a major component is Credit Card applications which I remember from the same period of my life) that had accrued at my house over the last two weeks and she looked at it and commented "Why can't they just send emails?".
At 62, I like to get a piece of paper because it won't disappear out of my awareness until I throw it in the trash, and I am missing the skill-set/strategy to have emails have that kind of permanence until I have dealt with them!
Nonetheless, since I use BillPay to pay my bills, I use, on average, maybe one stamp a month for out-going mail and visit the PO maybe once a quarter to ship one of their fixed rate boxes!
So, in my life, what I normally think of as "mail" (out-going) hardly exists. I have also noticed a decrease in junk mail, but that may be partially related to the virus.
It does appear that a major function of the USPS has become an extension of the other package delivery services.
Another factor in the USPS's job description is picking up mail (as needed) from any home every day (yes, UPS and FedEx do it, but not nearly the same scale)!

Looking at this from a macro logistics/efficiency standpoint there is a lot of waste when I see the PO, UPS, Amazon, FedEx, and sometimes, DHL trucks all driving through my neighborhood on a daily basis. I'm not sure it could ever happen because competitors would need to work together, but it would save a lot of time and gas if one service (USPS, since they already have to drive by every house) handled all residential deliveries (with the known contingency that any of the other services could compete if the cost got unreasonable, as is the current model used for USPS already taking some of these deliveries at present).

It is interesting to think about how Amazon's commitment to 2-day delivery has changed the world (well, the US, at least, not sure how prevalent Amazon is in other countries). It certainly is a major component of their success as I weigh waiting 2 days against having to go to Wally World, and combined with the better selection and ease of comparison shopping at Amazon, it is an easy call not to drive anywhere!

But, just as I believe Tesla caused the entire auto industry to accelerate their e-car game (instead of it being a slower transition, likely with lobbyists slowing down regulations, Tesla gave the auto industry an "Oh Sh!t" moment where they realized they needed to get on-board before e-car companies replaced them), Amazon has caused the package delivery services to up their game!

 

[slipperybidness]

My daughter graduated in May and is starting her independent life.
I brought her the stack of mail (a major component is Credit Card applications which I remember from the same period of my life) that had accrued at my house over the last two weeks and she looked at it and commented "Why can't they just send emails?".
At 62, I like to get a piece of paper because it won't disappear out of my awareness until I throw it in the trash, and I am missing the skill-set/strategy to have emails have that kind of permanence until I have dealt with them!
Nonetheless, since I use BillPay to pay my bills, I use, on average, maybe one stamp a month for out-going mail and visit the PO maybe once a quarter to ship one of their fixed rate boxes!
So, in my life, what I normally think of as "mail" (out-going) hardly exists. I have also noticed a decrease in junk mail, but that may be partially related to the virus.
It does appear that a major function of the USPS has become an extension of the other package delivery services.
Another factor in the USPS's job description is picking up mail (ass needed) from any home every day (yes, UPS and FedEx do it, but not nearly the same scale)!

Looking at this from a macro logistics/efficiency standpoint there is a lot of waste when I see the PO, UPS, Amazon, FedEx, and sometimes, DHL trucks all driving through my neighborhood on a daily basis. I'm not sure it could ever happen because competitors would need to work together, but it would save a lot of time and gas if one service (USPS, since they already have to drive by every house) handled all residential deliveries (with the known contingency that any of the other services could compete if the cost got unreasonable, as is the current model used for USPS already taking some of these deliveries at present).

It is interesting to think about how Amazon's commitment to 2-day delivery has changed the world (well, the US, at least, not sure how prevalent Amazon is in other countries). It certainly is a major component of their success as I weigh waiting 2 days against having to go to Wally World, and combined with the better selection and ease of comparison shopping at Amazon, it is an easy call not to drive anywhere!

But, just as I believe Tesla caused the entire auto industry to accelerate their e-car game (instead of it being a slower transition, likely with lobbyists slowing down regulations, Tesla gave the auto industry an "Oh Sh!t" moment where they realized they needed to get on-board before e-car companies replaced them), Amazon has caused the package delivery services to up their game!

I have personally found that the Amazon internal deliveries are much more reliable and much better at predicting delivery times vs. any of the logistics companies! I have also had fewer damaged goods arrive by comparison.

2-day delivery, heck next day is common and even same day is prevalent in several major cities.

 

[KEW]

I have personally found that the Amazon internal deliveries are much more reliable and much better at predicting delivery times vs. any of the logistics companies! I have also had fewer damaged goods arrive by comparison.

2-day delivery, heck next day is common and even same day is prevalent in several major cities.

The one huge drawback to USPS is they do a really sorry job of providing tracking information!
To my knowledge they do not use a bar code (or other format) to automatically track each piece every time it arrives or departs a location like the others do.
That is inexpensive and effortless once you have the scanners in place. But again, part of the issue is USPS "grew up" as a handler of envelopes while the others handled boxes. 20 years ago, bar codes on boxes made much more sense than bar codes on envelopes. I'm not sure that is still the case.

 

[Trell]

The one huge drawback to USPS is they do a really sorry job of providing tracking information!
...

I'm pretty sure that bill tracking works excellently

 

[panteragstk]

I can tell you more than you'd ever want to know about USPS and their former partnership with Amazon. I say former because at the time the USPS was THE shipper for Amazon and what prompted USPS to start doing Sunday deliveries.

The USPS purchased a large number of handhelds in order to work with Amazon's very strict tracking requirements as well as delivery notifications. For the most part this went well, but there were quite a few post offices that were less than stellar at this. Mine at the time was one of them. The delivery folks didn't attend the "what's the red flag for?" class so they'd just put incoming mail on top of the outgoing mail. I had a delivery person ring my doorbell, put a "sorry we missed you" sticker on 2 seconds later. I open the door 3 seconds later to see them get in their truck and drive away. Zero fuc#$ given. They'd also mark packages as delivered when loading their trucks so I might get it that day, I might not.

I happen to work with the head of delivery (or whatever his official position was) on the very large account for the previously mentioned devices. He had me email him specifics and things suddenly got better. Weird?

Anyway, USPS tried very hard to stay the main shipper for Amazon, but things like the above lost the contract for them, or at least a large portion of the contract once Amazon announced their own shipping service. After that, I don't ever get Amazon packages delivered by USPS where I live now.

One thing that was shocking is how much mail the USPS process in a given minute. It's astounding. The fact that they get mail where it's supposed to go with the level of accuracy they do is quite amazing, but it just wasn't good enough for Amazon in the long run. I personally had very good luck with USPS Amazon deliveries where I am now and the Amazon deliveries are very good too, but are also not very efficient. I've had two or more Amazon trucks at my house in a given day. Maybe they're coming from different distribution centers, but that's dumb. USPS and UPS don't typically do that. Fedex either.

So, it's been a few years since I had to deal with USPS on a business level, but that's the gist of what I remember from their deal with Amazon. Fun stuff.

 

[lovinthehd]

The USPS purchased a large number of handhelds in order to work with Amazon's very strict tracking requirements as well as delivery notifications. For the most part this went well, but there were quite a few post offices that were less than stellar at this. Mine at the time was one of them. The delivery folks didn't attend the "what's the red flag for?" class so they'd just put incoming mail on top of the outgoing mail. I had a delivery person ring my doorbell, put a "sorry we missed you" sticker on 2 seconds later. I open the door 3 seconds later to see them get in their truck and drive away. Zero fuc#$ given. They'd also mark packages as delivered when loading their trucks so I might get it that day, I might not.

I happen to work with the head of delivery (or whatever his official position was) on the very large account for the previously mentioned devices. He had me email him specifics and things suddenly got better. Weird?

Anyway, USPS tried very hard to stay the main shipper for Amazon, but things like the above lost the contract for them, or at least a large portion of the contract once Amazon announced their own shipping service. After that, I don't ever get Amazon packages delivered by USPS where I live now.

One thing that was shocking is how much mail the USPS process in a given minute. It's astounding. The fact that they get mail where it's supposed to go with the level of accuracy they do is quite amazing, but it just wasn't good enough for Amazon in the long run. I personally had very good luck with USPS Amazon deliveries where I am now and the Amazon deliveries are very good too, but are also not very efficient. I've had two or more Amazon trucks at my house in a given day. Maybe they're coming from different distribution centers, but that's dumb. USPS and UPS don't typically do that. Fedex either.

So, it's been a few years since I had to deal with USPS on a business level, but that's the gist of what I remember from their deal with Amazon. Fun stuff.

I've never had any of the delivery services deliver on Sunday unless I paid extra, let alone see USPS work on a Sunday except at the big annex facilities....but I can't remember the last time I did anything beyond Amazon Prime's 2-day. I've not lived in a big city for quite a long time either.

Liked that missed the red flag class thing but that's pretty sad that training would be so badly done. I've lived in rural areas and that's not been a problem with my mailmen, but if they didn't know about the red flag thing it would be really weird as most all our mailboxes are in groups, forget if its just an application or a fee to have a box just for your property. The ring the bell and slap a notice and run thing was perfected by Fedex and UPS IME. My mailmen have always actually waited for me to answer the door when I had to sign for something. These days so many shippers waive signature its not as big a deal anymore, tho.

We do have fedex and ups delivering in our town, but quite a few of my Amazon packages are final delivered by USPS still. Can't imagine doing anything outbound without the USPS particularly....we have no ups/fedex/mail type facility otherwise without a very long drive. How would I get my Netflix rental discs!? Now that we finally (like in the last year or so) have decent internet connections maybe I could get along without them, but still not quite as good as the bluray

I am also not fully ready for everything electronic/email, grew up on paper, used it my entire career altho it was just starting to become a more paperless environment towards the end. I still have physical filing for my own personal organization of records and such. I can see that some day it will all be paperless, tho.

 

[panteragstk]

I've never had any of the delivery services deliver on Sunday unless I paid extra, let alone see USPS work on a Sunday except at the big annex facilities....but I can't remember the last time I did anything beyond Amazon Prime's 2-day. I've not lived in a big city for quite a long time either.

Liked that missed the red flag class thing but that's pretty sad that training would be so badly done. I've lived in rural areas and that's not been a problem with my mailmen, but if they didn't know about the red flag thing it would be really weird as most all our mailboxes are in groups, forget if its just an application or a fee to have a box just for your property. The ring the bell and slap a notice and run thing was perfected by Fedex and UPS IME. My mailmen have always actually waited for me to answer the door when I had to sign for something. These days so many shippers waive signature its not as big a deal anymore, tho.

We do have fedex and ups delivering in our town, but quite a few of my Amazon packages are final delivered by USPS still. Can't imagine doing anything outbound without the USPS particularly....we have no ups/fedex/mail type facility otherwise without a very long drive. How would I get my Netflix rental discs!? Now that we finally (like in the last year or so) have decent internet connections maybe I could get along without them, but still not quite as good as the bluray

I am also not fully ready for everything electronic/email, grew up on paper, used it my entire career altho it was just starting to become a more paperless environment towards the end. I still have physical filing for my own personal organization of records and such. I can see that some day it will all be paperless, tho.

That city was the first time I ever had any issues with my mail. Before that, all mailboxes were on the house so they got out of the truck at the beginning of the block and made their rounds.

That city had individual mail boxes on the curb of each house. Now it's two different banks of mailboxes. Much easier on the delivery person IMHO. I'm technically rural so we don't get real mail trucks, just some dude in a jeep.

 

[Trebdp83]

I hate sloppy and plainclothes mailmen. Wear that s#%t with pride you f#%ker!

 

[panteragstk]

I hate sloppy and plainclothes mailmen. Wear that s#%t with pride you f#%ker!

Meh. As long as they do their job I don't care. It's only rural ones that do that here. In my other city, it was random as to who wore the uniform. Always thought that was weird.

 

[lovinthehd]

That city was the first time I ever had any issues with my mail. Before that, all mailboxes were on the house so they got out of the truck at the beginning of the block and made their rounds.

That city had individual mail boxes on the curb of each house. Now it's two different banks of mailboxes. Much easier on the delivery person IMHO. I'm technically rural so we don't get real mail trucks, just some dude in a jeep.

Where I lived in San Francisco (and fairly typical for many neighborhoods) we had just sidewalk/driveway in front of the house (no yard in front) with a steel gate that packages would necessarily need to be left outside of so before I retired I would have any packages simply come to me at the office. After I retired I noticed more about the mailman vs ups/fedex differences. Then again spent my career in logistics so I tend to notice these things

I think our PO here has one small dedicated type postal delivery vehicle but I think most is done in personal vehicles as I usually got a guy in a pickup truck and saw another gal in another unofficial vehicle regularly in an adjacent area....and my guy recently changed to a minivan with RHD, has a USPS sign on the door but not the typical USPS paint job, it might even be a magnetic sign now that I think about it.

The delivery folk aren't generally in uniform that I've noticed, maybe a shirt/jacket, tho the ones behind the counter in the PO itself I believe always are....

 

[Trebdp83]

If we keep lowering the bar you might get a delivery from a guy in pajamas.