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“There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

usps.com

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Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#11

Post by CoryMathews »

jonknee wrote: post #9

> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three. ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

ye its probably one of the only ones that spam is a good thing for it.

I would say 80-90% of the mail I get is spam.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#13

Post by Avshalom »

jonknee wrote: post #10
billybob wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good criticisms. But a publicly-funded post office has some advantages, too. They will operate at a loss in tiny areas, which means you can still get mail to Grandma, even though there is only one traffic light in her town. Also - 39 cents to send a letter anywhere in the country? Still a pretty good deal.

39 cents? It hasn't been that since ~2006. They currently cost 44 cents: http://www.usps.com/prices/first-class-mail-prices.htm

considering that those 44 cents will get a letter basically hand delivered from Key West Florida to Barrow Alaska. Still a pretty good deal.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#14

Post by csbrooks »

hyperbovine wrote: post #12

The real loser here is netflix. 17% increase in delivery time and not a damn thing you can do about it. Ouch.

Maybe that's ok, since in the future most of their customers will probably want to watch everything online (through them) anyway.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#16

Post by graywh »

wallflower wrote: post #7

The postal service derives a significant amount of its revenue from pitching direct mail to businesses as an effective way to reach customers (4) This whole report from USPS (1) is worth reading but some notable excerpts: "In 2009, 84 billion pieces of first-class mail and 83 billion pieces of direct mail were handled." Invoices and bills constitute a large part of first-class mail (and they continue to move online,…

> Imagine UPS/DHL/FedEx's profits if they went from deliver-on-demand to deliver-to-everywhere-regardless-of-demand:

But UPS and FedEx already have something similar that occasionally leverages the USPS for the final leg of delivery. The FedEx version is called SmartPost.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#17

Post by petercooper »

Awesome. I never saw why the mail system should work longer than the normal working week anyway. Hopefully the UK will go the same way sometime soon. The threat of having mail turn up on a Saturday (that you might need to wait in for) isn't worth it.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#18

Post by ballpark »

jonknee wrote: post #9

> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three. ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

Good point! However, those spammers are doing some good because they're paying money to stamp their mail, which goes to employ mail personel, etc. For that reason I feel good when I throw away credit card letters while saying "Dear greedy creditor, No I don't want your raping fees, but thank you for paying money for me to throw this letter in recycling."

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#19

Post by pxlpshr »

hyperbovine wrote: post #12

The real loser here is netflix. 17% increase in delivery time and not a damn thing you can do about it. Ouch.

Not really, I see mail as a temporary problem. If Netflix Streaming contained all the top titles, I would use that almost exclusively. There really would be no reason for mail, it's slow and inefficient.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#20

Post by jonknee »

Avshalom wrote: post #13
jonknee wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

39 cents? It hasn't been that since ~2006. They currently cost 44 cents: http://www.usps.com/prices/first-class-mail-prices.htm

considering that those 44 cents will get a letter basically hand delivered from Key West Florida to Barrow Alaska. Still a pretty good deal.

I'm not saying it's a bad deal, just that the OP hadn't actually bought a stamp in a long time (or at least realized the cost).
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