The Postal Service in trouble?
- Thread starter Robcatt24
- Start date
Did not read, but having experience working in a government job, I’ve seen the incompetence and waste of these massive government bureaucracies. It’s throwing taxpayer money in a fire. When will we learn?
Know a few people who work or have worked at the USPS.
It's crazy how much money some of them make.
I know a couple who make at least $10/hr.
You mean it's crazy how little they make?
The US government is the most inefficiently run organization I’ve ever seen. And what’s more, the folks in DC don’t seem to care one bit.
Congress requiring them to fund their retirement benefits for the next 75 years isn't helping the situation.
This is the big issue with USPS hemorrhaging money each year. I agree with there being some lousy leadership through the years. I work for the USPS. Lotta good hard working people in our organization who have worked very hard all through this Covid situation. Like most huge corporations there is definite waste of resources. And some very poorly negotiated contracts.
It makes the books look bad, but theyre otherwise turning a profit no? I suppose I guess I see it as whats so terrible about actually being able to meet your future commitments to workers retirement that they were promised?
The other side of the coin (and not that I agree with this), is that society needs low IQ, near-worthless jobs, so to give the common man a paycheck. My dad had a phrase for it, but it slips my memory.. "Job-fare" or something? Basically, these gov agencies, that have 5 people doing the job of 1, are a unique form of welfare.
It's not so much by design or done purposely, just how the American society settled in. Kind of thought-provoking. I used to sort of laugh at the lazy IT state worker.. but now I think "Maybe we NEED to pay some people $50k a year to go beep boop on a computer that more or less, does nothing of value".
It's not so much by design or done purposely, just how the American society settled in. Kind of thought-provoking. I used to sort of laugh at the lazy IT state worker.. but now I think "Maybe we NEED to pay some people $50k a year to go beep boop on a computer that more or less, does nothing of value".
Why would they? They live fat off of tax payers and don't give a single **** about any of said tax payers.
I thought the USPS didn't take government funding and was self-sustaining from the sale of stamps and other services?
When has the USPS not been in trouble? It has my entire life. They waste tons of money and provide a subpar product, despite having some very good hard working people working for them on the front lines.
It's like a master class in how to poorly run something.
In terms of trust - Barely anyone sends anything important via regular mail (for good reason). Actions speak louder than words.
It's like a master class in how to poorly run something.
In terms of trust - Barely anyone sends anything important via regular mail (for good reason). Actions speak louder than words.
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Both of these are correct. Along with the other poster that mentioned having bad contracts. People used to complain about the price of stamps, but the fact that I can drop a letter in the mail and have someone deliver it across the country for 50 cents is crazy.
You’re kinda hitting on the idea of a basic universal income, only with some work and responsiblity attached. During the Great Depression it was stuff like the WPA. When I think about it, people in power (whether money or politics) thrive on giving poor people just enough to keep the placated.
Correct, they have been a self funded enterprise since the 80s. For some reason people still think they pay taxes for it.
I think a lot of their business now is parcel delivery, same as UPS and FedEx , along with regular mail, bills, andnof course the trash coupon mailers.
This. For cost, no one beats USPS. If youre going to ship something super quick and pay the shipping premium, I personally rate shop. But for anything that "just needs to get there when it gets there" I always just use USPS. Regular mail shipping with them is always cheaper.
One of my buddies works there and we talk about the issues with the place so I have a bit of interest in this stuff. My impression is the biggest issues there are management. Total Peter principle setup. And then the union. While it provides great pay and benefits for the workers, it also allows the lazy asses to stick around too. She says that they see good people come in, eager to work and want to get the job done, and then inept or terrivle management wears them down, along with the long tenured lazy coworkers who game the system via union rules, which creates resentment, and ultimately a lot of good people leave.
Shes a good person and a good worker (became friends at previous job) and speaks well of many of het other co workers. Seems like theres a lot of good people who work there who want things to be fixed and efficient. But there arent many blue collar job options out there today with solid pay for a family and benefits plus reliable retirement.
One thing people dont seem to consider is they are setup to deliver mail to EVERYONE. That means in Alaska, yeah, they use sled dogs. Or go to the bottom of the holler to your trailer in Eastern Kentucky.
UPS, FedEx, Amazon, DHL etc all use USPS to deliver those last miles to areas where it makes zero business sense to ship the whole way. USPS isnt meant to be a profitable Fortune 500 company. Its purpose is to get mail and packages to every citizen of the United States. They accept losses in order to guarantee service.
Im not advocating for them, I sure as hell agree there's alot of stupid government bureaucracy involved, but theyre an essential service for the country. Hopefully brighter minds than ours can reform them into an efficient model for future generations.
The U.S. Postal Service lost $8.8 billion in fiscal 2019, more than doubling its losses from the previous year. The results marked the 13th consecutive year the mailing agency lost money, although USPS did post a slight uptick in revenue to $71.3 billion.Nov 14, 2019
Who makes up this deficit then?
Thank you, beat me to it. USPS has to serve everyone, whether it makes business sense or not, and now deliver on Sundays as well, unlike Amazon, UPS, etc., who can elect where to deliver and for how much.
Very similar to the arguments about taxi cab service in major cities, who have to pay large licence fees, whereas Uber is almost always much cheaper. But . . . taxi companies have to agree to serve the entire community and at all times of day or night (even high crime areas) that Uber and other ride hailing companies can choose to ignore.
Finally, email has eliminated the need for large parts of mail, of all kinds. 80% of our business at my office is now sent PDF via email, instead of regular mail or FedEx. We don't even keep paper files 1/4 as much as we used to, everything is stored on the computer system or on a cloud based server.
Uber being cheaper wasnt the reason ppl stopped using taxis. Most taxis refused to take card, they wouldn't stop off your route like if you wanted to go through a drive thru bc they wanted you out and to pick up a new fair (which I never understood bc the meter keeps running). Pretty sure they will drive you up to a 100 miles too like a taxi, but good luck finding a cab that will actually do it, especiallyif you cross state lines bc unless licensed they won't be able to pick anyone else up..
Anyway...for mail, if we are talking business wise. Depends on your business. If you have something more than 2lbs...fedex is cheaper
You got me. My impression is theyre losing money technically because the revenue theyre generating is covering their commitment to prefunding their retirement. My assumption is the answer is raising postage rates? Surely someone on this board knows.
I see em delivering Amazon packages in my neighborhood om Sundays, which is crazy, but I bet doing that is one way theyre trying to generate additional revenue.
I think the issues they face have been addressed in this very thread. With email and the internet, the reality is there is now a finite number of documents we all need to be hand delivered. That includes birthday cards. Hell, bills are paid online now. So a lot of it anymore really is competition for speed of delivery of packages or documents.
The only thing I can think of otherwise is submitting payments for other archaic government agencies who dont ler you pay online.. my vehicle registrations theoretically can be paid online but every year I get them and try and every year it says my cars arent in there so I have to mail a check [laughing]
USPS is one of the issues I side generally with the libs on. It does provide a vital and necessary public service for a lot of people especially in more rural areas
Even if it UPS or FedEx didn't provide a more reliable product, anytime I've ever shipped a package, almost every single time it was cheaper from UPS or FedEx than USPS. At one of ym previous jobs, we had a post office on campus a well as a place that handled shipping UPS and FedEx packages. Several times the Post Office employees themselves would tell me to go to the UPS/FedEx window because it would more than likely be cheaper.
More people need to realize this. Privatize USPS and turn it into a regular business like many Republicans want to do and it's really going to screw over their own base in rural America because they'll cut out stuff like that.
I'd rather see them cut out a home delivery day and only deliver 5 days a week unless something is shipped Priority Mail Express, which is their version of overnight shipping. Can't remember which day it is (Tuesday maybe?), but whichever day has the least amount of final destination delivery + on-site pickup would be cut as that would generate the best savings to income ratio.
This would mean cutting out Sunday package deliveries as well, unless of course shipped overnight. Now we'll still have all the behind the scenes stuff running seven days a week, 24 hours a day like we do now, just the last leg of delivery to the final destination would be reduced by a day. If something was of utmost importance to get somewhere ASAP, then someone can just overnight it, otherwise they'll just have to live with the potential of it being delivered one day later.
The cost savings just on gas and vehicle maintenance/depreciation/replacement alone would be massive and it would have a negligible impact on the vast majority of people. Just think, every year you have 52 less days of driving, over seven years (well slightly over seven years but rounding) that's one whole less year of driving for every vehicle.
Could be some labor savings in either reduced work force or reduced hours, but that would be a union battle and who knows what happens with that.
My dad worked there, it had its ups and downs, seems like significantly more downs than ups. But it paid pretty well, especially at the end since he'd been there for over 20 years. I once considered it when I was having a career "crisis" becuase I knew I wanted to get out of what I was doing but had no idea what I wanted to do, but he vehemently told me avoid doing it.
In the end, really the only reason he stayed in it as long as he did was because of the pay. If it hadn't paid well, he would have gladly left for another job with less BS even if it had paid less. There was a lot of ****** up stuff that happened there. A lot of people were driven to depression from the job. Many retired early because of health problems that developed early, including my dad. One of his acquaintances that would normally work the same shift as him went into the parking lot at lunch one day and committed suicide by hanging.
They are a joke. Hard to believe some people want them handling 60 million or so ballots.
They are over paid pill heads. They will steal your mail in a second