Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The U.S. Postal Service, which is projecting a $14.1 billion loss this fiscal year, is discussing restructuring options with potential advisers, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Officials at the Postal Service have met in recent weeks with Moelis & Co., Rothschild and Perella Weinberg Partners LP, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. As of last week, the service hadn’t hired any of the firms and was still deciding whether it needs an outside adviser, the people said.

Wall Street firms have been employed by U.S. and international governments in a number

Millions of dollars worth of pallets and trays are being stolen from the U.S. Postal Service every year, but the agency can't afford to implement systems for tracking the equipment. Mail-transport equipment (MTE) is in such short supply in parts of the country that some businesses report that they have not been able to send out scheduled mailings.

The USPS Office of Inspector General is trying to spread the word that MTEs “may be used only to transport mail, and borrowers of MTE (such as private mailers) are responsible for its proper use and return.”

The Postal Service has spent over $24M

A recent customer survey conducted by ThinkShapes Mail indicates an extremely high customer satisfaction rating among users of shaped mail pieces. Owner Karen O’Brien says shaped mail increases the response rate over “regular” direct mail by two to three time.

The country’s two largest publication printers sparred this week over who has the biggest, baddest programs for helping customers save money on postage. Quad/Graphics fired the first salvo yesterday when it announced that, “It is now breaking company and industry records for co-mail pool sizes, aggregated volume and customer postage savings.”

It took only a day for North America’s largest printing company to respond.

“We’re operating the most full co-mail production lines in the industry,” Thomas J. Quinlan, R.R. Donnelley’s CEO, said today during the company’s quarterly earnings call. “Our offer is unmatched distribution that includes co-mailing of Standard, Periodicals and

Senators announced a bipartisan plan Wednesday to help keep the financially ailing Postal Service solvent and continue six-day mail delivery for at least two more years. According to the Senate bill: The Postal Service would receive a refund of nearly $7 billion it has overpaid into the Federal Employee Retirement System.

The agency would be required to use part of the refund to set up a buyout program aimed at reducing staff by 100,000.

Agency payments of about $5.5 billion into an account to fund future retiree health benefits would be reduced by spreading out the payment schedule.

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