US Mail System Needs To Think Differently
The USPS is dying and in need of a complete restructure, less and less people are using the postal service and there is no indication that we will start using it more, everything points to less reliance. It’s also incredibly wasteful, all the junk mail we get, both in paper, sorting, and transportation costs. Yet we’re still trying to make it work.
First, a majority of mail door to door delivery must completely go, be reduced, or be charged a premium. It’s much more efficient to group mail boxes together–it requires less time, less man power, and less transportation costs. The biggest problem is that it is less convenient for customers. Well maybe.
Things have changed, a lot less important information comes to us through the mail and a lot more junk and ads, which are becoming more important to keep USPS afloat. How often do you receive something in the mail that you actually need or want? Then, how often do you actually need the physical contents of the letter? Could you just have easily gotten the information from an email or a scan of the letter? For most people they only get something that matches that criteria once a week and even then it’s not time sensitive.
Imagine being able to use an app to remotely view all the mail you’ve received or that’s on its way and pick what gets thrown away, saved for pick up, and even auto scanned to read from your personal computer–all before going to pick it up. There would be no more guessing to what is waiting for you at the mail box, no more junk mail in your home trash, and a much more efficient mail system. You could potentially even stop mail being sent to you before it leaves the originating station, substantially saving transportation costs. A smart system could also make more efficient use of mail boxes, let the app know where you want to pick up and they could have your mail waiting there in a temporary mailbox for you. It sounds more convenient than what we have now, and definitely “greener”.
There is a company doing something like this right now, http://www.earthclassmail.com/. I would love to hear the government consider something like this.
The problem is that junk mail effectively subsidizes first class mail, and any way to screen it would result in a much higher cost for everyone else.
I do think the app idea is good — if FedEx can keep track of packages for no cost, there’s no reason we couldn’t do it for mail, other than perhaps each individual needing a mail-user ID# so that a machine could quickly read all pieces of mail and tell you that you, James Kanka, have six pieces of mail in transit in the USPS network, three of which are at your post office now.
I think that right now, USPS needs to come up with a plan to slowly shift away from their current model. Realistically, you could switch to three-day-a-week delivery (half the town gets mail Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and the other half gets mail Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday) without affecting anyone’s life too much. Businesses could pay to get five-day delivery, if they thought they needed it. But I think (and I’m guessing, these aren’t facts) that about 90% of people over 35 would demand regular delivery in some form. As the demographics shift, there could be a greater transition away from delivery: twice a week, once a week, then once a month, with a mailbox for you at your local post office.
That transition would take a lot of time — fifteen to twenty years, maybe more. Maybe by then mail will be totally obsolete, other than shipping from online retailers, and they’ll have to come up with another gameplan. But a dramatic shift now would be legislating to a lot of people who love the mail and can’t imagine life without it. I don’t agree with those people, but I don’t think you can totally ignore their feelings.
Of course, this would all be moot if the USPS didn’t have a monopoly on the delivery of first-class mail. Remove that, let the market sort it out, and it doesn’t much matter what you or I think as individuals.
I agree that junk mail is bringing in a lot of money but it’s not doing enough, the postal service is still failing. There is no point in chasing a revenue that will never meet your costs. Effectively, the postal service is digging their own grave by chasing advertising, it requires many more resources and sets up a doomed system. The more junk mail we get the less appealing mail becomes and the less we use it to communicate, once we stop using it the junk mail revenue will slow and stop. If the postal service continues to base their structure and decisions around junk mail, although it’s a large source of revenue, it will continue to lose money. That said they could probably make some good money buy having advertisements on their online user applications (like the one I mentioned), possibly more… it’s better at tracking and costs less to produce for advertisers.
So much has changed since the Postal Service was created, it’s not just that we email and call to communicate more, there are physically more houses and we are further spread apart. I believe the answer is to increase efficiency. Like you mentioned, cutting delivery days would do that but it also slows down the time to get your mail which is already one of it’s faults. Though it is a big step, I think stopping residential delivery all together would be the most efficient, mailboxes would allow you receive mail any day of the week and coupled with an electronic system like I mentioned would ease people’s minds that they are not missing anything. I think it would have to be rolled out slow and tested in high density cities first, but eventually could be rolled out over most of the country. It could even start out as an opt in, I’d do it to be able to have a digital copy of all my mail and send it to wherever I am. A slow rollout would allow junk mail revenue to continue longer while also creating revenue with online advertising. Even if everyone goes digital, junk mail will still be seen, just probably not kept, things like post card advertisements would still work pretty well.
Strangely, like you mentioned, this system opens the door to having mail sent to a person instead of a physical address. Just identify the person you want the mail to go to and then the system could reference the account to determine where they are. There is no need for a personal physical mailbox, just an available one that’s there when and where you need to pick it up.
While mail will decrease, package delivery will grow slowly. More people will be buying products online, but things like books, CD, DVDs, video games, and software will more and more be delivered digitally. I can’t imagine mail becoming obsolete… but I can see the USPS dying.
How would you suggest the USPS exit? They have so many trucks, buildings, employees, and machines. Has anything like it ever happened before? I imagine that they would have to find a buyer for it all.