The U.S. Postal Service’s network was designed to deliver First-Class Mail in 1 to 3 days. If you drop a First-Class letter going to a local address in the mail, you can expect it to be delivered the next day.
These basic delivery standards date from a time before e-mail and other electronic methods of of communication. Now, as some First-Class Mail shifts to electronic alternatives, are these service standards worth the cost?
The overnight First-Class Mail service standard requires the Postal Service to keep its processing plants open through the night and on Sundays. The Postal Service needs more labor, machines, and facility space to meet the compressed time schedule. Two trips are often needed to take mail to the delivery unit so that carriers can start sorting manual mail while machines at the plant finish sorting automated mail. In addition, the tight transportation windows required by the overnight service standard limit the size of plants’ service areas, reducing the Postal Service’s ability to consolidate the network.
Loading ... Loading ...The 2-day and 3-day standards for First-Class Mail and Priority Mail can also add to costs. Often the need to meet service standards means that First-Class Mail and Priority Mail have to travel by air rather than less expensive ground transportation.
Some of the Postal Service’s largest business mailers have stated they value consistency over high speed and would tolerate slightly slower service to save costs. As the Postal Service examines many different alternatives to improve its financial position, could relaxing service standards be an option?
The OIG asked Christensen Associates to examine the costs that could be avoided by relaxing service standards by 1 day. Christensen estimated the Postal Service could save up to $1.5 billion if service standards were loosened by 1 day for its higher speed products (First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Periodicals). To learn more, read the recently released white paper Cost of Service Standards.
What do you think? Should the Postal Service relax the overnight service standard? Should it continue to use air transportation for First-Class Mail?
This blog is hosted by the OIG’s Risk Analysis Research Center (RARC).
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My local post office told me, when I checked on a local delivery after 3 days if non-receipt, that the average local delivery was 3 days. So what is the answer: management’s or the local post office itself? I love the sayinag, “It’s a symptom of a greater proglem.”
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Instead of closing small post offices, why not stop door to door delivery. Isn’t door to door delivery the most expensive part of the post office? Instead, everyone would have a P O Box, and most of these small offices could be handled by a clerk instead of a Postmaster. At this point you may not even need to charge for P O Boxes.
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Instead of shuting down the postal bussiness, just cancel out Sat. mail delevery and shut down the post office’s on Saturday.
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USPS needs to relax and eliminate policies that inhibit customer service. Clearly the policies are intended to serve only USPS. Several times I have attempted to use Click-n-Ship but my scale measures package weight differently than the post office scale. Instead of shipping my item and allowing me to pay the difference, USPS returns the package, makes me print a new label, makes me request a refund for the “incorrect” label, and makes me waste a lot of time and money kissing their ***. USPS is so caught up on their policies that they cannot provide a practical, efficient, customer oriented service. Get your act together or get out of the shipping business!
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Consolidate deliveries. Most communities on the East coast still get their mail at their front door. Staff can be reduced by using community mail boxes at the end of streets. These boxes are also more secure. Put more of the self-service package mailing machines in post office lobbies.
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Creating secure Virtual Post Office:
1) online virtual money orders
2) pobox holders offered UPS consumer
Email
3) scanner station to electronically transmit
& time stamp for sensitive
correspondence
4) provide shipping container transport
services from point a to point b
Note: businesses & consumer furniture
5) usps proprietory digital document security
which is recognized in courts and other
official places of business
6) UPS university: educate, train and instruct
Note: 2nd & third world countries on best
practices and applcations
7) outsource trained personnel to perform
Mailing tasks for private businesses &
Non profits
8) create motivational camps for personnel
9) incorporate that all personnel have
strengths and weaknesses and Target
into service areas accordingly
10) the model “Ford” system needs to be
re-considered….historically it was an
imposed mechanical…seek and
implement a more sustainible process
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It seems a critical issue if private carriers are going to increasingly be used (and pushed by conservatives in gorvernment) for non electronic mail delivery that some mechanism for registering private carriers enabling them to deliver mail to “mail boxes” at people’s houses will be required. The biggest hassle of privatized mail is having to be present for the delivery.
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