Pushing the Envelope wants to ask you for your thoughts on how the U.S. Postal Service, as it faces its financial crisis, might improve operations and reduce costs while continuing to deliver mail.
Carriers are sometimes required to complete tasks and processes that leave them scratching their heads and asking, “why are we doing this?” Examples previously cited by some carriers include waiting in line for accountable items (mail that requires a signature) and having their productivity “rewarded” with more work. Another significant issue of concern to carriers is having single pieces of First Class Mail® driven out to them while on their route. There are some that believe this happens to influence First Class performance delivery scores. This action will often require a carrier to change or retrace their line of travel.
Loading ...What are some of the operations, tasks, and processes that do not make sense in delivery operations and that you believe management can eliminate? And why don’t they make sense? What ideas do you have to improve these operations, tasks, and processes and reduce cost? Improve service?
We invite you to share your answers in the comment section below.
This topic is hosted by the OIG’s Delivery Directorate.
46 Comments
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People from the top down should talk to the rank and file. We do have good ideas that aren’t all complaints. A lot of the people un Washington have been away from the job so long they don’t know all the nuts and bolts like they used to.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Having letter carriers retrace their steps to deliver First Class letters is a waste of time. If we are now looking at the consolidation of processing facilities which will affect delivery standards, driving out individual pieces of misdirected First Class mail should be eliminated. Also, there must be a better way to distribute accountables. Since such items are scannable, perhaps they can be tracked when sorted to the specific route.
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We are backwards, we should offer free Po box services since its cheaper to deliver and it brings customers to our product at the window. Then we should charge for home delivery. We have it set up backwards now- turn it around.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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1. There are too many layers of management & people who do not touch the mail. USPS should elim an average of one management postion per post office (30,000) & save approx $2.1 billio/year. These peole have nothing to do except walk around with a clipboard & look busy.
2. The mail handler & distribution clerk job needs to be abolished. They can no longer fill their day with 8 hours of work. Carriers & PTF carriers can easily do this job. PTF carriers could mailhandle & ditribute mail in the morning & then carry mail in the afternoon. This would save a lot of money.
3. ” Waiting on mail ” causes all of the carrier overtime in the USPS. The DPS & FSS machines should be running in the late morning/early afternoon. While the carriers are out on the street the next days mail should be run thru the machines & distributed to the local post offices. When the carriers arrive back to their unit in the late afternoon the next days mail should already be their & staged & ready for delivery for the next morning. Any additional mail that comes in the next morning after the designated cutoff time should be tagged as ” next days mail ” to include first class mail. 50 carriers should not be waiting around for mail in the morning & incurring mass amounts of OT in the process. If someone needs something delivered in one day we have a serve called ” Express Mail ” & it’s guarenteed. Implementing this would save approx $5billion /year in unnecessary carrier overtime & penalty.
4. Anybody who works in the office should have their med benefits reduced to the 75% level as other Fed workers. Letter carriers shoul remain at at least 90% for the folowing reasons. a. Carriers are exposed to the harsh elements all year & incur more expense & illness then their indoor coworkers. b. Because carriers are harassed & disicplined for routine injuries such as ankle sprains etc.. many go unreported & the carrier picks up the med expence.
5. Clerk pay should be reduced at least 10% below carrier pay & mailhandle & distribution clerk pay should be reduced by at least 20% below the lettr carrier rate. Letter carriers work twice as hard as everybody else & take all the risks only to be harassed & unduly disciplined for doing their job.
6. Every job in the post office except for Management, carriers, window clerk, truck drivers, OIG, & PIS, should be abolished & contracted out. Machine operators & warehouseman in particular should be contracted out to a private company. Ideally, the companies that make the DPS & FSS machines should employ their own workers to process our mail. They would do a better job & be in a better hands on position to fix problems as they arose & make improvements.
7. PTF employees shoud not have union representation during the probationary period. This is counter productive to training an individual in the performance of his duties. The probationary period should be extended from 3 to 6 months in order for the employee to prove himself & the PTF probationary salary should be reduced to about $12.00/hour. PTF carriers should not have hold down rights on routes. This definately impairs managements ability to respond effectively to sick calls & other routine day to day situations.
Hot debate. What do you think?
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Where should I start?
1. Curtailed mail on ledge (REQUIRED to put there the previous day) has to be removed before I can begin casing 1st and 2nd class today’s mail.
2. Can’t keep various forms (3849,1571, etc.) at case
3. TOO SMALL CASES (550 stops crammed into 2 wings
4. Two or MORE house numbers per cell
5. Waiting for accountables per not enough clerks
6. Finding foreign reds in parcel hamper
7. Too much emphasis put on “office” time and “street” time
8. Having to sort through and put in order extra bundles while you are trying to load up truck.
Will continue later. Ran out of time.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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We don’t have to wait in line for accountable mail at my station, but we have to check back between 10:30-11:00 AM for late arriving Express mail. My station in about 12 miles from the plant and airport and I find it Unbelievable that we cannot get our Express Mail dispatches before we leave for the street at 9:30-10 AM. This is supposed to be our premium product and they are getting delivered in a major city at 11-11:55 AM!
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Streamline delivery, don’t cut service at all! Cutting service would just hasten and make the problem worse! Pay City Carriers the same way Rural Carriers are paid! Not hourly but with evaulated routes. That would save a few billion in overtime! There would be not more ODL list, no 8 hour only list, just “Here’s your mail, get it done by dispatch!” Just like us Rurals do it. You would be suprised how quickly the city routes would get done every day!
Hot debate. What do you think?
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why are we required to take FSS to the street-imagine the savings in fuel and time if we were allowed to sort these flats in the office with our other mail-taking the FSS to the street adds another hour of street time, and as a rural carrier, this adds an additional 6 hours per week just on 1 route-I wonder how much that equates to in fuel usage, especially in an LLV with over 100,000 miles-certainly doesn’t make any sense to me
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Eliminate the “free” forwarding, make it a fee based service, we spend so much time doing this and it is costly. All returned mail should be postage due, no more freeloading
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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When we come upon out of sequence first class letters in our DPS while delivering, we are REQUIRED to retrace the route and deliver these letters. Not only is it a waste of gas at well over $3.00 per gallon, it is really a dis-service. If the customer has already picked up his mail, then this “very important” letter sits overnight in their mailbox rather than safe at the post office. When I think I have heard it all, a directive like this comes along. And these managers are in charge of my future? OUCH!
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Nothing has changed since the OIG audit of the eIDEAS employee suggestion program. Well there was one change: any discussion of the above through social media now requires management’s consent.
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being productive does not seem to be as important as APPEARING productive on paper.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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the 99′s are the biggest waste of money i see. the houses are not moving. we are efficient. leave us alone.
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At the Phila P&DC there are more people watching the mail on the dock than actually moving the mail. Mon Dec 19 during peak time, 18:00-2000, when collection was being unloaded we counted 7 supervisors, 2 upper level management watching the process, 2 expeditors, AND ONLY 2 MAILHANDLERS. An absolute waste. Too many chiefs, not enough Indians. The facility runs itself!
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to retrace the line of travel, i prefer to choose Rural Letter Carrier in delivering mail.
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Eliminate all scans and let the carrier deliver and set up the route.Eliminate third bundles, there is a reason we only have two hands. Eliminate fourth bundles( see the reason above).An honest daays work for an honest days pay.I have 8 hours to do my route, dont worry how the time is divided.Eliminate uniform allowances.Just give us the necessary clothing to get the job done.Encourage better performance, don’t penalize it.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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We should establish where mailboxes should go. How can it be justfied to have 12 mailboxes on or by the garages and have to or 3 on the same loop up two flights of steps. Or have a mostly mounted route and have 20 or 30 up on the house when most of the neighbor hood have mounted boxes. The Post Office should have the authority to dictate where the mail will be delivered. Exceptions can be made for the elderly or disable. How about requiring the resident to relocate the box when there is a new move in. This would help immensly.
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Oh, how true! Mail boxes should be in clusters. Whatever let to people, who pay zero in tax dollars or fees, to have thier mailbox outside their front door for ease of picking out the mail is insane. What a waste of time to walk not only up a hill to get to the house, but then stairs so I can deposit it at their door.
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tgp We already do this at my office. I have been carrying mail for 5 years and when we have a new resident on a walking loop move in we give them a box letter kindly asking to help fight costs. This has slowly led to the elimination of walking loops on some routes and we have been able to eliminate 3 routes when people retired. Also if a carrier has incidents such as boxes in ridiculous places the supervisor talks with the customer and explains why the change is needed. Last year we went through each route and asked customers for curbside boxes on routes that were mostly mounted and had tons of hops in between. The disabled and elderly were not affected. This saves time and money one neighborhood agreed to cluster boxes instead of us walking so that 4hr aux route is now 45 mins on a regular route now. You should talk to your local postmaster and or supervisor about this.Also it is policy ANY new structure has to put up a curbside box no exceptions here my Supv says thats national policy.
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I am always amazed when they dispatch someone to the office with an Express Mail piece, which is already late, and the sender will be getting his money back anyway. They know the carriers are not there in the afternoon, there will be no one to deliver it, but they dispatch it out when it could have just came with tomorrows mail. The person paid $18.30 to Mail it. It was transported across the country, but is late and the person will get the money refunded. So, why not just spend $50 more to take it to the AO when it can’t be delivered until tomorrow anyway? Just one example of somneone somewhere having no common sense and throwing away money by the bucketsfull.
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Wow, to even ask that question about retracing is silly. When I started in 1990, carriers were instructed to NEVER retrace steps to deliver missorted letters, as it was a waste of time, money and USPS resources. That was the right way to do it. But when “scores” became important, USPS managers concerned about their bonuses set up elaborate hub systems to make sure most ALL mail was delivered same day. This wasted a lot of money and those managers should be ashamed of themselves. I’ve seen carriers go out (in the dark) to drive out ONE letter for 45 minutes overtime round trip. Unbelievable. A few letters not delivered until the next day isn’t going to hurt anyone, and chances are the customer won’t even notice the delay.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Everything management comes up with slows us down. Our city carrier jobs have evolved into something new. MSP scans – we take our time now. Downtime pivot pieces? Hard to find. Later start times make us work in the dark, can’t walk as fast in the dark. No uniformity on Delivery Confirmation labels. Some packages have 5 – pick one. Scanners don’t work when they’re wet. We need extra time to manually input the 18 digit numbers 5 times a day. All of these things happen every single day in our end of the business. Delivery has been OVER-managed. In my experience if any of the previously listed events aren’t successful, your supervisor needs an explanation because someone 3 states away needs an explanation. Do you folks really believe that UPS and Fed Ex managers sit around all day and dream up ways to SLOW down their carriers?? Yet that’s exactly what has happened to us over the last 10 years.
Well-loved. Like or Dislike:
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Bill this is so true. When I first started we came in at 6:30am they wanted us back by 5 then 7am they want us back by 5 then 7:30am they want us back by 5. Anybody see something wrong with this picture? Slowing us down but expecting the same times absurd! Its dark I have 20/20 vision but the darkness slows me down a ton even on mounted routes. The glare on the windshield. The pitch black walking loops. My direct supervisor has a manager he has a partner manager they report to the postmaster who has an MPOO who has a manager who has a district manager who has an area vp who has a boss who has a boss who has a boss who has a boss who has the dep PM general who has the PM general who then has the useless PRC who has useless congress. the lowest ranking person here makes a little over $60k then 90k then 95k then 120k then 170k then im not sure of the rest I know PM general makes a little over $276k. The PO listed over 38 people who take home over $200k really? None of these people are even allowed to touch mail (most are afraid of it) they work 4-6hrs 4-5 days a week and complain about how slow a 62 year old man is going up courthouse stairs? Harass craft about being productive 100% of the day which 98% here are. GIVE ME A BREAK you can’t make money when you burn it before it gets to the bank….
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