The next time you drive down the road, force yourself to take a good look at the number of mailboxes you see neatly positioned in front of every home. Whether you’re in Middle America, Metro America, or Rural America, without exception, one of the almost 1 million U.S. Postal Service (“USPS”) employees hand delivers your daily snail mail.
Today it came to me as we were driving down the street. As we passed each residence,I felt like RainMan as I observed every detail of each passing mailbox. Sitting in the passenger seat – the wife was driving – and I was pecking away a message via Twitter on my Blackberry; reviewing unread emails deposited in my Inbox, etc. Suddenly, in a flash of brilliance I thought to myself, “Here’s how we could reduce our reliance on foreign oil: if each of these people with old dented mailboxes had an electronic ‘inbox’ like me, they wouldn’t have to rely on receiving their daily snail-mail via an old clunkin’ gas consuming U.S. Postal Service vehicle!”
The high-tech man that I am; I came home and Googled some research material on the U.S. Postal Service’s public reporting of the organization’s fuel consumption. What I also discovered will make great material content for a future article — the USPS uses way too many acronyms. WAY TOO MANY. If one digs deeper into their syndrome, they will wonder if some of the terminology the USPS uses originated from an acronym. They even abbreviate USPS by calling themselves “The Service”. Again, that’s a topic for future discussion.
In their mission statement, the USPS boasts:
The Postal Service delivers to nearly 148 million delivery points six days a week and provides mailing and shipping services through almost 37,000 postal retail outlets and the usps.com Web site.
All Americans should ask themselves, “WHY”?
Okay, okay, I can already hear the central argument: “not everybody has access to the internet”, but it seems that everybody is becoming pretty serious about the environment, and the price of a gallon of gasoline. If they’re serious about decreasing our dependence on oil, as well as the impact of USPS vehicle emissions polluting the environment, they should seriously consider setting themselves up on electronic mail delivery. For those resistance to the technology, I foresee a potential economy of retail kiosks that will allow individuals to retrieve their email. For that matter, we’ll have postal centers conveniently located throughout the U.S., and if we abolish the service, they could convert most of their facilities to serve the members of the public who do not have access to computers.
In a report published by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO – another popular government acronym) entitled U.S. POSTAL SERVICE Vulnerability to Fluctuating Fuel Prices Requires Improved Tracking and Monitoring of Consumption Information, the GAO clearly indicates that the U.S.P.S. is struggling with accuracy in tracking and monitoring their own fuel consumption. In the report, the GAO reports finding “incomplete data for most of its transportation and facility fuel consumption”, and generally describes the over 34,000 postal facilities that are dependent on fuel to support its mail delivery and transportation networks, as well as heat and operate those facilities. It’s obvious in the report that the USPS is not very concerned about measuring their own fuel consumption based on the evaluation by the GAO, and the specific findings by the GAO that “The Service was only able to provide cost data for most fuel categories for 2004, 2005, and 2006.“ In my opinion, that fact should be enough to upset most tech-resistant Americans to seal their mailboxes forever.
To support the network of transportation and facilities required to deliver your daily mail, the USPS spent approximately $2.3 billion (roughly, as the GAO report indicates “the Service does not know how much fuel is being consumed in the majority of its facilities, for fuel used to service nearly 55,000 rural routes, or through most of its air transportation contracts. The Service currently has metering systems at only a few of its over 34,000 occupied facilities).
Simply stated, if we completely abolished the USPS, we would eliminate several problems. The GAO would have much less fuel to account for – $2.3 billion less. The $900 million dollars in paper junk mail we receive could be delivered electronically and therefore improve American productivity by eliminating the need to physically sort through their mail daily; needless to say we could potentially save billions of trees. The environment would so much cleaner as a result of burning $2.3 billion dollars (2006 dollars) less fuel annually.
One last note, don’t be misguided by the USPS’s ploy to “develop” alternative fuels and efficient vehicles. Their fuel costs actually increased when they replaced lighter vehicles with heavier hybrids and flex fuel vehicles. The loss in jobs is equivalent to what happened to Blockbuster Music and Video employees when cable T.V. and the internet made them irrelevant. The world really is a much better place than it was when we used to shag down to the video store with the whole family. On top of all that, those old CD’s don’t wear as nicely as my new 160 GB iPod.
From here on out, I’m going to do my part by going 100% paperless. Save yourself the ink, paper and .41 cent stamp, please send my email to peter@petersantilli.com.
Abolishing mail delivery would certainly cut down on fuel usage – I totally agree.
However, with this declining economy, what happens to the millons of USPS employees that would now be out of my work – my husband included? What’s your suggestion for that one?
Carol Deckert
Netweaving/Networking Coach
RUNLancaster.com
Reductions in delivery have been done before, but not for decades. It used to be that mail was delivered twice a day, when there were no interwebs and people lived further apart. While you idea on reduction of scope of delivery mass has merit, there are still many businesses and people in the US, not even taking into account the rest of the world who rely on snail mail to move things. Much of this is non-electronic based stuff like documents, belongings, packages, etc. There are certain economies of cale infrastructure wise that actually make the Postal Service necessary. They have a mandated mission not to make money or to lose money, so the money they expend is a reflection of operationg costs. They get a letter half-way around the world remarkably cheaply for those that can’t email.
Good point, but what you’re missing is that congress will never allow the postal service to be abolished. The greatest power Congress retains is that to do that which is necessary and proper for carrying into effect their other powers, notably the power to levy and collect taxes. Without mailing addresses and an organization by which to deliver tax forms and allow citizens to remit tax payments, this would be nearly impossible.
That said, the USPS is a pathetic excuse for a shipping and freight business and is lightyears behind its privatized competitors like UPS and FedEx.
Actually, Congress has the express power to regulate mail and establish post offices; it doesn’t need the necessary and proper clause to keep the USPS alive.
However, partial abolition of the USPS would certainly be a good idea. Limit the USPS deliveries to packages and other non-document goods. Anything that IS a document, should be sent via email.
To effectively implement this, the states should implement an official email system, where each resident receives an email associated with that person’s identity. So when you go get your driver’s license, they would set up an official email for you as well. Each person would be responsible for checking that email. Anything the government wants to send, it sends it to that email, instead of wasting billions of dollars on paper, ink, and of course, mail.
To the lady who’s married to a USPS employee: Your argument, that even though your husband’s job is useless and would be better done using a machine but we should still keep him employed, is without merit. Times are changing. We simply cannot hold on to old technology just because we don’t want people who can ONLY work with it would lose their jobs if we upgraded.
I…love…pie
??Happy??
I think abolishing the post office completely and totally would net a big savings and not really have any ill effects. If you wanted to send a letter or parcel, just use a private company like UPS or FedEx. All cheap correspondence or bill paying can be done on the web. When the central job of the post office is down to delivering junk mail, I think it’s time has come. Besides, the the post office out of the way, it would leave room for more private competitors with new services to offer. You don’t need to ‘privatize’ anything, it will privatize all on its own. I think its funny the way people want to replace a government agency with a government-sponsored company. What’s the difference? None.
This article really helped me with a paper for Civics class. Thanks! ^_^
BTW, your last name is the shizbiznit…y’know, it’s cool.