Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The U.S. Postal Service had a bang-up October, with domestic mail volume up nearly 7 percent over the same month last year.

The U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors has announced that Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe has decided to retire February 1, 2015, after 39 years with the Postal Service. Megan J. Brennan, the current COO of the Postal Service, has been chosen to replace Donahoe.

The Postal Service will be delivering packages seven days a week in major cities and high-volume areas starting November 17 through Christmas Day in response to expected double-digit package volume growth. "During the holidays, no carrier makes more deliveries to more places than the Postal Service, and this year, we’re raising the bar with enhanced tracking and Sunday delivery," said Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe.

SUSSEX, WI—Current Chairman of the Senate for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Tom Carper, recently shared his views with Republic 3.0 on keeping the U.S. Postal Service viable in the 21st Century.

While we agree with Senator Carper that Congress needs to act during the lame-duck session following the November elections, we are also adamant to make sure the reform is meaningful for mailers, rather than making the current situation worse.

We disagree with his assumptions related to pricing.

A lot of ink has been spilled discussing and cussing the U.S. Postal Service's plan to close 82 mail processing centers next year. David Williams, USPS' vice president of networks, showed (the following) slides in a recent presentation to mailers about the "Phase II" consolidations scheduled to begin in January.

Despite the fact that the U.S. Postal Service lost almost $5 billion in fiscal year 2013, Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman Ruth Goldway spent nearly $40,000 on travel, The Washington Free Beacon reports.

Goldway and the PRC office have consistently defended her travel, telling The Washington Post in a statement that the chairman "attends only those [conferences and meetings] that are beneficial to the Commission and the Postal Service in terms of sharing information about activities in the U.S."

Current Chairman of the Senate for Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Senator Tom Carper, recently shared his views with Republic 3.0 on keeping the U.S. Postal Service viable in the 21st Century.

While we agree with Senator Carper that Congress needs to act during the lame-duck session following the November elections, we are also adamant to make sure the reform is meaningful for mailers, rather than making the current situation worse.

We disagree with his assumptions related to pricing.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe made a statement this week demonstrating that postal executives’ views about weekend delivery of packages have changed significantly in the past four years. "The future will be a seven-day package world and a five-day mail world," a USA Today article quoted Donahoe as saying.

In recent months, weekend delivery of parcels has gone from obligation to opportunity. The Postal Service is delivering Amazon packages in a growing number of urban markets. In San Francisco, it is testing same-day, seven-days-a-week delivery for multiple retailers and today added early-morning grocery deliveries to its test offerings in that city.

The Postal Service’s proposed market test of same-day grocery deliveries, apparently in partnership with Amazon, would require even more TLC on the part of USPS’s carrier force than normal deliveries, the agency revealed this week in filings with the Postal Regulatory Commission.

"All Customized Delivery items will be transported directly to a customer’s door and will be delivered [between 3 a.m. and 7 a.m.] without disturbing the recipient," USPS revealed to the PRC.

To avoid theft of the early-morning deliveries, such "special delivery instructions" could conceivably include placing the special grocery-filled totes at back doors, in hallways, into parked cars, or even...

According to U.S Postal Service spokesman Dave Partenheimer, the Governors of the U.S. Postal Service have decided not to seek a price change for mail and shipping products and services in January because of the uncertainty regarding the exigent price increase.