Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

A proposed compromise toward ending Saturday U.S. mail delivery is falling flat with unions while getting the support of a Senate committee chairman leading a push to advance stalled postal legislation.

The idea is meeting resistance from postal unions, which want to keep Saturday delivery and the jobs that go with it. Legislation that would relieve the money-losing service of billions of dollars in annual health-care and pension obligations and allow other changes is stalled in both chambers of Congress.

There’s always next year. Such has become the refrain for the often discussed, much sought after prize of overhauling the U.S. Postal Service. Lawmakers were again set to deliver postal reform in 2013, and at various points of the year set goals of March, August and Thanksgiving for passage.

But after the latest in a series of setbacks, the window for acting on legislation in 2013 has closed, and reformers will have to renew their fight after New Year’s.

What the Postal Service needs is mostly in the hands of Congress, which structured USPS in the pre-internet days to be a cash cow for the federal government. Times have changed, and the cash cow has been milked so dry it can’t replace 25-year-old delivery vehicles that are held together with duct tape and rubber bands.

But the laws and practices that drained the Postal Service of billions of dollars remain unchanged. And, more than ever, USPS needs less not-in-my district Congressional interference that stymies reasonable downsizing of its distribution network.

This week Structural Graphics is featuring a new advertising medium called variable media mail that combines variable voice and video messaging with variable data print to create a memorable connection with an audience.

Are you ready for waves of changes in 2014? Jeffrey Peoples of Window Book explains why now may be more important than ever to implement Intelligent Mail Full-service.

The Postal Service’s request for “exigent” rate increases on “Market-Dominant” mail is “an unsustainable business model which can only lead to continued postal deficits and more requests to exceed the rate cap,” UPS wrote in a filing last week with the Postal Regulatory Commission. Market-Dominant mail includes such classes as First-Class, Standard, and Periodicals, where USPS’s mailbox monopoly is a huge barrier to competition.

By contrast, “Competitive” services include expedited and parcel delivery, where USPS tends to compete head on with UPS, FedEx, and other private businesses.

This week, Structural Graphics takes a fun and unique twist on a holiday card! Pharmaceutical agency, HCB Health, incorporated a QR code into its mailer that when scanned, launches a video of a fire burning with holiday music being played in the background emulating a real fireplace!

Legislation to overhaul the Postal Service has hit yet another roadblock, with the agency’s oversight committee once again delaying its markup of the reform bill.

The markup—which gives Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members an opportunity to offer and vote on amendments to the bill, and ultimately decide whether to move it to the full Senate—was originally scheduled for November 6, but was delayed indefinitely due to a lack of support from Democrats.

Aides said the committee would vote on the bill—the 2013 Postal Reform Act—before Thanksgiving, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., rescheduled a markup for Wednesday. But Carper, who

And here we are again with a little hope. The package business is growing at double digits, retailers are competing on service, and the USPS wants to grab a share of the game. It could even be the right business decision to make, but I’m tasked with offering the perspective of the printer, and here it is.

In the Postal Points newsletter for the Association of Marketing Service Providers, postal commentator Leo Raymond, recently wrote about "an ongoing oxymoron that Congress, in its meddling ineptitude, continues to perpetuate: the Postal Service cannot be cast as a public service, with a 'universal service obligation,' while concurrently being told to be businesslike in its operations."

The universal service obligation means USPS has to provide roughly the same level of service to everyone at the same price, regardless of the agency's costs to serve a particular customer.