And It Doesn't Involve Amazon!
Why is it that every year we hear about how much money the United States Post Office has lost? Is it because the top level management has no clue what they are doing or money is being filtered to the wrong places? I think you all know the answer to that one? I’ve heard about the issues with our government mandating the pre-funding of retirement accounts for so many years that it’s time to think outside the box and look at some new ideas that can be controlled directly by the USPS and not be dependent on other government offices.
Most of it comes down to common sense – something the USPS (and government in general) seems to be lacking in spades these days. I may not be up on all of the latest analytics, figures, algorithms and other b.s. that the PO throws at us but here are some common sense ideas that I think (as do my other rural mail carriers) that could be implemented to generate more income immediately for the USPS.
USPS REVENUE GENERATING IDEAS
- Ensure that everyone in top management has actual work experience as either a rural carrier or city carrier. If they have never done the job, they are not qualified to make decisions on our behalf. PERIOD!
- Increase the cost of first class stamps to $1.00. According to the Office of Strategic Planning, the average cost of domestic first-class mail letter postage is $1.50 internationally. Are their postal delivery services superior to ours to account for such a discrepancy in costs?
- Charge $1.00 annually for customers to have access to Informed Delivery. According to USPS in October 2022, there are 50 million Informed Delivery users in the U.S. While I personally find this number to be hard to believe, if in fact it is accurate, that’s an immediate $50 million going right back to the USPS! Do you really think people would complain about paying $1/year for this service? How about $5/year. That’s $250 million!! Etc…
- Charge customers $1 every time they have us redeliver their mail after being put on hold. I don’t know what the numbers are on this but can you imagine how much money this would bring into the PO? Our office is constantly dealing with customers putting their mail on hold and having us redeliver their mail (and parcels) after their return. Sometimes this can be week’s worth of mail and not only does it take up space in our cases (which none of us have enough of) but it also is a pain in the butt trying to fit all of that accumulated mail in a customers box. I am aware most people have become extremely lazy the past few years here in the U.S. so the fear of charging that $1.00 for redelivery should not be much of a concern because how many of these customers are going to make the trip to their local P.O. just to save that $1 fee? Exactly! Not very many. This might be more difficult to implement than some other ideas but it’s something to think about
I am not an economic wizard when it comes to this sort of thing but just offering some simple, common sense suggestions that could generate much needed additional income into the USPS.