The answer is in the details, not the rhetoric.

The United States Post Service lost $3.8 billion last year, and is on track to lose more this year. You can expect a rise in the cost of a stamp. It has more than 1,000,000 employees who after 15 years of service receive 49 days of paid time off each year, that is almost 10 weeks a year. It has a generous retirement program.

It is hard to imagine, but if USPS were efficient in moving mail and boxes from place to place all these years, neither UPS or FedEx would be in existence. But they are, and they make a profit. I understand they do not carry a letter for 44 cents, nor do they subsidize the magazine companies. Maybe the post office should not either.

Aside from stamp pricing, USPS inefficiency is legendary. Yesterday, for example, I received a pink notice slip in my mail. These are the pink notices that cover everything with little check boxes and imperceptible writing by USPS employees. Thank heaven some of the notices have boxes that are merely checked. The approximate cost to deliver the notice to my home is $1.14.

The notice was from the USPS instructing me that I had to drive 6 miles to the post office to pay a postage due of $2.41 on a package sent to me by someone. The approximate fuel cost for me to drive to post office and back, excluding an hour of my time, is $2.40. Of course, I had to stand in line at the post office.

I handed the clerk the notice and she proceeded to disappear in the back room only to reappear a few minutes later with a package that I had sent to someone. I had paid the original postage of $2.41. However, according to the clerk, the package was too big to fit into the person's mail box. That person was left a pink notice too. He did not go to the post office to pick up the package so the package was returned to me. I had to pay another $2.41 to have it returned to me. Are you following all this?

However, there was not enough postage to return my package to me so I was left a pink notice to pay the $2.41 additional postage to return the package, that I had sent, to me. When I arrived at the post office, and after waiting in line for 45 minutes , I asked the clerk, "If I had not come to the post office and paid the postage what would have happened to my package?" She replied, "We would have destroyed the package and sent it to the local landfill." The approximate cost of all these actions must be at least $150. By the way, I sent the package to Danville, California from Kansas City, Missouri. The package traveled more than 3,200 miles by plane, truck and car, was sorted by numerous electronic machines and was personally handled by at least 14 USPS employees.


The USPS processes 17 billion mail pieces a year. It had revenues of $67 billion in 2010. According to the USPS fact sheet, it is losing $4 billion per year.  I, for one, am not surprised.  I would think that considering the scale of the USPS operation, the length of experience and unrivaled access to the latest technology, it would be a shining example of cost efficiency. It is not. If you disagree, then you have not gone to your local post office recently. This is not a diatribe on USPS employees, it is however a criticism of a rigid management structure that does not reward innovation and plain old common sense.

What is the solution  to the package delivery example? Drop the original package by the front door like UPS and FedEx does. Estimated saving $150 million per year.

Obama is not responsible for the inefficiency in the USPS, but he is responsible albeit accountable for  doing nothing about it. We need a new leader. The answer is in the details not in the rhetoric. In my house, I turn off the lights to save a dollar or two.