I figgered out why the post office is going broke

[Alpo]

Sunday I'm walking the dog, and as we get close back to my house I see a mailman truck coming. Sunday. Mail doesn't come on Sunday. But they're out delivering. Overtime.

 

He makes a left and heads down Calhoun. One minute later, here comes another mailman truck, from the same direction. I know this is not the same one, because he has not had enough time to completely circle The block and be headed towards me again. So they have two deliveries on this one block, and they send out two trucks.

 

When I get to Calhoun I turn down it because there's four or five little girl kids down there and the idiotic dog likes to get petted. So while she's getting loved on and slobbering all over these kids' faces, here comes a third mailman truck down the same street. Now if FedEx or UPS - whichever - has three deliveries in the same block, it just seems to make sense to have one truck make all three deliveries. Instead they send three separate trucks.

 

I'm amazed that the post office is still in business.

[Waxahachie Kid #17017 L]

What I do not understand is...I mail a bill/letter to a local business here in town. Or someone mails me something, from here in town.

I look at the postmark. It is mailed from here in town at the local post office. It goes all the way to Dallas, 40 miles north of here, gets processed, I presume, and is sent right back here. I can see the date on the post mark, as well as the postmarks origin. They mail the letter, here in town, and three or four days later, it hits my mailbox from Dallas.

My in-laws live in deep East Texas. When they mail a local letter, it goes to Shreveport, Louisiana, and then comes back!!!! From their post office to Shreveport is at least 100 miles, one way. This is insanity!

 

I remember, as a kid, that the post office had two slots. One said: "out of town", and one said: "local delivery". I do not see but one slot, at our post office now.

 

This makes zero business sense to me. You mail a letter, locally, it goes round trip 80 miles, and takes three to four days.

Give me a break!!!

 

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

The sorting is done by machines except when it isn’t.

[Dirty Dog Doug]

they just delivered 84 pounds of lead for $8.00 shipping 

I leave a cart out for my mailman to roll it to my door 

[Tex Jones, SASS 2263]

As I understand it, special deliveries can be anytime, even on Sunday. 

[Eyesa Horg]

4 hours ago, Dirty Dog Doug said:

they just delivered 84 pounds of lead for $8.00 shipping 

I leave a cart out for my mailman to roll it to my door 

How the heck do you get lead shipped for $8??

[Muleshoe Bill SASS #67022]

The real reason the Postal Service is so far in debt is 2006, Congress passed a law that imposed extraordinary costs on the U.S. Postal Service. The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) required the USPS to create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. No other federal agency or private corporation has this imposed on them by law.  Without this law, the USPS would have posted several million in profit for each of the last six years.

 

Most mail is processed by machines at processing centers. The machines can process about ten thousand pieces of mail an hour, sort to another center and or sort locally. This would have taken about 100 clerks eight hours to do. It is cheaper to truck tons of mail to a single center, process and send on to destination than to pay a couple hundred clerks eight hours pay a day. 

Alpo, the Sunday delivery of parcels are done by non career employees who are paid a reduced straight time wage. 

 

The newest Postmaster  General was caught making postal management take dozens of machines out of operation and either scrapping them or storing them. He is one of Trump's biggest financial donors and it was a really dumb move on his part. He claimed the machines were not needed and or idle.  Sort of true, machines are not run, but are being maintained from about 8 or 9 AM through about 4 PM daily. Most of the mail is processed in about a 12 - 14 hour window from 4 Pm through about 6 to 8 AM. So the PMG goes to a processing center in middle of day and sees machines doing nothing and makes a conclusion the machines are not needed...or whatever reason. Not going into the political implication, I am sure most of you have seen the MSM furor over the mail in ballot issue, the machines being pulled, donor by PMG etc.

 

[J-BAR #18287]

About 1960 I accompanied my step-grandfather as he delivered mail on foot, no truck, small town.  He would put outgoing mail, those envelopes headed back to the post office for processing, in a separate pocket of his big leather bag.  More than once that day, he saw that an outgoing envelope was addressed to a recipient who lived ahead of us, so he just wrote “cancelled” across the stamp and delivered it the same day.

 

 I don’t think they do that anymore.

[Smuteye John SASS#24774]

The USPS has a delivery contract with Amazon.  If you see a mailman out on Sunday, he's delivering Amazon packages, not the mail.

[Pat Riot]

27 minutes ago, Smuteye John SASS#24774 said:

The USPS has a delivery contract with Amazon.  If you see a mailman out on Sunday, he's delivering Amazon packages, not the mail.

What Smuteye said ^^^^^

[Choctaw Jack]

If I mail a letter to my neighboring town,6 miles away,it travels to the nearest postal processing center which is about 200 miles away.It takes 3 to 5 working days.

I have mailed items to Phoenix which is over 400 miles away and they were delivered in as little as 2 days.

No rhyme or reason,it just is.

We do most correspondence electronically, or at least all that we can.

[irish ike, SASS #43615]

While I believe the USPS is inefficient, overstaffed, and too much management, how many of you have posted about the path a package takes using UPS/FEDEX etc. Same sort of thing. They manage processing centers not people and location of pickup to delivery.

[Alpo]

2 hours ago, Smuteye John SASS#24774 said:

The USPS has a delivery contract with Amazon.  If you see a mailman out on Sunday, he's delivering Amazon packages, not the mail.

My point was that in one block, of 19 houses, there were three deliveries, and instead of putting them all on one truck and having one driver make the deliveries, they sent out three men in three trucks.

[Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984]

3 hours ago, Eyesa Horg said:

How the heck do you get lead shipped for $8??

Fixed price box.

[Pat Riot]

39 minutes ago, Alpo said:

My point was that in one block, of 19 houses, there were three deliveries, and instead of putting them all on one truck and having one driver make the deliveries, they sent out three men in three trucks.

Yep and Amazon pays for all of  them.

[Pat Riot]

People complain about the USPS but you try getting a letter from point A to point B for 50 cents to or from anywhere in the USA.

 

Call UPS  and FedEx and ask the what they charge.

[G W Wade]

Remember, USPS is run by the government.   Does it make sense now?      GW

[Sixgun Sheridan]

1 hour ago, Pat Riot, SASS #13748 said:

Yep and Amazon pays for all of  them.

 

Amazon pays USPS $2 for each package. That in no way covers the cost of processing, handling, and delivery. This is straight from my ex who works for USPS.

 

BTW she could fill this thread with tons of examples of how USPS is not only terribly inefficient, but is chock full of lazy, inept and corrupt employees and managers. The leadership in each office is rife with nepotism and the workers all rely on the Union to cover their butts whenever they fail to perform. And if you were to read the UPW (United Postal Workers Union) newsletters we got in the mail each month you'd swear you were reading a communist manifesto.

[Tex Wilson]

I live in Prescott Valley, if I mail a letter to some one in Prescott Valley, it goes down to Phoenix, 100 miles south of me and then back up here to P.V. to get delivered.

 

They gotta make sure I get my monies worth for the cost of the stamp.

[Four-Eyed Buck,SASS #14795]

Ours goes from here( Canton) to Cleveland for handling. Used to go to Akron, and before that it was handled locally. My Dad was a mail handler at our main post office, loaded mail bags onto trucks or unloaded them.

[MizPete]

We have 3 carriers on my route.  One of them delivers the mail by 3pm each day & puts our packages behind a flower pot.  I'm scared to leave him cookies lest one of the other two get them.

[watab kid]

they could save a bunch not delivering all the junk mail i get , i dont need coupons , im not looking for hearing aids and  ive already bought my medicare supplemental insurance , i also know who im voting for , 

[Muleshoe Bill SASS #67022]

8 hours ago, watab kid said:

they could save a bunch not delivering all the junk mail i get , i dont need coupons , im not looking for hearing aids and  ive already bought my medicare supplemental insurance , i also know who im voting for , 

Actually the "junk mail" is where the USPS makes a lot of money.  A large amount is addressed to people who have moved on and is not forward-able. This mail then goes into recycling or trash.  It really doesn't take any more time to deliver one piece of bulk rate (junk) mail than 5.  More than 5 it does add fraction of second.  A good city letter carrier who knows his/her route who knows his customers past mail can easily estimate how much letter mail they are going to get and pull it out of the machine sorted mail fairly quickly and minimize how long it takes to find the first and last letter.  In the old days before machine sortation of letter mail, we would hit the street having sorted each piece of letter and "flat" (magazine, large envelopes etc) and already knew who were go have mail for and not. 

 

Now, it is not so easy, but still once you know who on your route gets what mail and what kind of volume, you plan ahead for it.  Delivering mail is not a mindless non thinking job.  You have to constantly read the addresses and names, remember who does live there and who has moved. Determine if the mail addressed to someone who has moved is still deliverable due to the address stating "Or Current Resident-Occupant). You have to determine if mail is forward-able or if someone has been gone so long it is returned to sender.  You have to do all this while walking (if a walking route) and keeping your eyes open for dogs, holes in yards, weird people etc. If you are on a mounted route, you have to look for obstructions, other cars, low hanging branches, children playing around cars, and in yards.

[Matthew Duncan]

I though mail was shipped the long way around because all of it is run though "sniffers" smelling for anthrax and drugs like that?

[Dustin Checotah]

On 10/27/2020 at 9:14 AM, Muleshoe Bill SASS #67022 said:

Most mail is processed by machines at processing centers. The machines can process about ten thousand pieces of mail an hour, sort to another center and or sort locally. This would have taken about 100 clerks eight hours to do. It is cheaper to truck tons of mail to a single center, process and send on to destination than to pay a couple hundred clerks eight hours pay a day. 

Alpo, the Sunday delivery of parcels are done by non career employees who are paid a reduced straight time wage.

I retired from the Postal Service about 4 years ago. You are right in your statement about the sorting being done by machine, but most of the sorting machines will sort at about 32,000 pieces per hour. At least they should be. A good manual clerk can sort about 800 pieces an hour but are limited by reach as how big their sort cage is to about 100 hold hold outs (towns, sectional centers , etc.) but the machine can with two people sort the above number with a hold out of 220-250. For city routs they can run them through twice and from the second pass they will be in delivery sequence. In order to do this they are usually in bigger cities because the machines are big, expensive and need trained technicians for maintenance. 

 

I do remember when I was in the Navy I would get mail from my parents that lived outside a small town in East central Oklahoma. I would get mail on  a ship out in the Mediterranean with a 3 day old postmark. By the time I was 10 years in the PO it would take mail at least a week to get from their house to mine in Maine. 

 

[Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967]

On 10/27/2020 at 6:21 AM, J-BAR #18287 said:

About 1960 I accompanied my step-grandfather as he delivered mail on foot, no truck, small town.  He would put outgoing mail, those envelopes headed back to the post office for processing, in a separate pocket of his big leather bag.  More than once that day, he saw that an outgoing envelope was addressed to a recipient who lived ahead of us, so he just wrote “cancelled” across the stamp and delivered it the same day.

 

 I don’t think they do that anymore.

 

On 10/27/2020 at 3:25 PM, Arizona Gunfighter said:

I live in Prescott Valley, if I mail a letter to some one in Prescott Valley, it goes down to Phoenix, 100 miles south of me and then back up here to P.V. to get delivered.

 

They gotta make sure I get my monies worth for the cost of the stamp.

 

Do y'all remember when the Post Office lobby had a slot for "Local" mail?  Seemed like a simple enough process for the carriers to sort it into the stuff they were going to deliver locally.

 

Now, in our town, if you drop a letter into a slot at the local Post Office addressed to someone next door to that Post Office, it still gets trucked to another county to be sorted.

 

I could write paragraphs about sour experiences with the Postal Service... I will say that they're still better than the Department of Motor Vehicles.  Usually.  Sometimes.  But I still get other people's mail multiple times a week, and too often things I expect are delayed or lost.

 

Oh, I once worked for the Postal Service - senior year of high school and first Christmas season of college.  Far preferred my civilian Navy job!