Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

USPS Direct Mail Hub was launched in July, to be piloted in Austin, TX, and in the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. The pilot, available via the uspsdmhub.com website, seeks to simplify the direct mail process by offering small businesses the necessary tools and partners to run a promotional campaign.

Printing Industries of America said the US Postal Service was leading the nation’s small businesses to make use of only a “very narrow” selection of direct mail suppliers.

But the PIA said potential mailers were only being encouraged to use Florida-based printer-mailer Directmail2go.com or California-based printer portal DirectMailQuotes.com, while there is also

Long-time postal union leader William Burrus objected today to a Dead Tree Edition article that indicated he might be giving up on trying to preserve Saturday delivery. Burrus' blog post—“Pick Your Fight”—was clearly a response to my article Sunday called “Throwing in the Towel on 5-Day Delivery?” In the interest of fairness, Dead Tree Edition is republishing his entire commentary below, along with some comments [in brackets].

One of the web sites that focuses on postal issues [that would be Dead Tree Edition] recently suggests that I favor "throwing in the towel" on five-day delivery by supporting the Obama plan for

An influential group of publication printers sent a letter to postal management last week to “express our concerns over the recent increase of customer complaints related to the late delivery of their catalogs and magazines. SCF drop shipments have increased from three-day to five-day at a large percentage of facilities,” stated the letter from Idealliance’s POISE committee.

If you want to know why major mailers are generally supporting major cost cuts at the U.S. Postal Service, consider this recent quotation from magazine-industry veteran Tom Martin: “When you look at the Three Ps, in 2000, printing was 45 percent to 55 percent of costs, paper was probably 20-25 percent of your costs, and postage was between 30 to 32 percent of overall costs,” the Cygnus Business Media executive told Folio.

“But now, the printer is probably sitting with only 32 to 35 percent of overall costs. Paper hasn’t changed that much...the number that has changed tremendously is postage

The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) revealed yesterday that it has retained the services of Ron Bloom, Obama’s former top advisor on manufacturing. The letter carriers’ union, which represents 280,000 members, also retained the services of investment bank Lazard Group to bolster its lobbying as Congress, the White House and the USPS itself seek a way to fill a potential $20 billion gap in the annual Postal Service budget expected by 2014.

NALC president Frederic V Rolando said Lazard and Bloom both had “extensive” experience revitalising large and complex businesses.

Rolando promised a “fact-based, non-political, non-ideological” effort to work with USPS

At the end of a lengthy analysis of the prospects for postal legislation yesterday, long-time postal union leader William Burrus made a statement that could signal a change in strategy on five-day delivery: “His [President Obama’s] proposal includes five-day delivery, which is strongly opposed by the unions but the decision must be made on which fights to engage in and with whom. Do we fight the Republican efforts to destroy the Postal Service and the unions or do we fight the Obama inclusion of five-day delivery...

Burrus’ statement suggests that the prospects are slim for getting the Obama Administration to change

Transferring tens of billions of dollars in federal worker retirement accounts back to the U.S. Postal Service would not address its long-term debt problems and would force unfunded liabilities on to taxpayers, according to a new government report. The conclusions by the Government Accountability Office run counter to the opinions of postal regulators, the postal inspector general and congressional Democrats, who say Congress should refund as much as $75 billion to the Postal Service for improperly overpaying federal retirement accounts since the 1970s.

...GAO concluded otherwise, writing in its report that “We have not found evidence of error of these types

President Obama thinks beer and wine are just the thing to help the U.S. Postal Service with its financial problems. The “President’s Plan for USPS Reform” includes “acceptance of beer and wine in the mail,” according to a recent presentation by Postmaster General Pat Donahoe. Current law prohibits shipping alcoholic beverages by mail.

The beer-and-wine language is a bit mysterious: “Allow USPS to increase collaboration w/ state and local governments; e.g. non-postal products, acceptance of beer and wine in the mail.” With many states having tight controls and hefty taxes on beer and wine, it’s not clear how enabling the Postal

The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS) financial problems have, of course, been big news lately, but they should hardly be a surprise. It didn’t take a genius to see this coming; here’s what appeared in Dead Tree Edition almost two years ago:

“Although the Postal Service is on track to become insolvent within a couple of years, Congress has shown no appetite for wrestling with the problems that vex the USPS. The Postal Service’s requests to stem the financial tide—by eliminating Saturday delivery and eliminating the prepaid retiree-benefit requirement, for example—will inevitably lead to a Congressional discussion of whether postal rates should

Fed up with paying about $7.3 billion annually in health care for postal workers, retirees and dependents, Patrick R. Donahoe is pushing plans that would allow USPS to spin out of the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and establish a separate postal health care system.

During an interview late last week, Donahoe was clearly annoyed and angry with the Obama administration and Congress for not endorsing his plans to remove USPS from FEHBP—a massive program providing an array of options for life insurance and health, dental, vision and long term care based on a worker or retiree’s occupation, labor union