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The U.S. Postal Service’s global business organization is poised to be a major player in the international postal arena.

Paul Vogel, senior vice president and managing director of the newly reorganized unit, emphasized this in a recent interview with DM News.

“We have a very good feel for the generic products that people would like to see us start getting into, he said.”

The generic products Mr. Vogel referred to are the simplified international shipping options the USPS has proposed to make it easier for customers to use the products. The proposal, published Dec. 20 in the Federal Register, would better align USPS international products with the agency’s well-known domestic products: Express Mail, Priority Mail and First Class Mail. The USPS would merge eight current options into four alternatives by combining products with overlapping service standards and prices.

Mr. Vogel said that the USPS sees growth opportunities in eastern Europe, the Arabic world, South America and Asia. While bigger Asian countries such as China, India, Japan and South Korea offer opportunities, “the baby tigers such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines are also developing infrastructures,” he said.

Despite its large consumer economy, western Europe is a little more challenging thanks to confusion in the postal sector, Mr. Vogel said.

“Part of that is because all of the posts are privatizing and the European Union is liberalizing all the posts, and they are all competing with each other so aggressively that I’d like that to stabilize a little bit,” he said.

The U.S. Postal Service™ Board of Governors today authorized the purchase of 5,856 new carrier route vehicles. The vehicles will replace existing Postal Service-owned right-hand drive (RHD) vehicles used on city routes that will then be redeployed to rural routes.

The purchase will conclude a three-part acquisition plan to provide 15,000 Postal Service-owned RHD vehicles to rural routes, a result of an interest arbitration decision involving the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. The contract is expected to be awarded next month following a competitive evaluation. Deployment of the RHD vehicles to rural routes is set to occur from August 2007 to September 2008. In addition to fulfilling the interest arbitration decision requirements, these RHD vehicles will improve safety by providing easier access to curb line mailboxes and better maneuverability.

Also at today’s meeting, James Miller was reelected chairman and Alan Kessler was reelected vice chairman of the Board. The Board also welcomed Thurgood Marshall, Jr, to his first Board meeting. Marshall was appointed a governor by President Bush on December 15 for a term that expires December 8, 2011.

The U.S. Postal Service® presented its new vision to revolutionize business mail by using standardized intelligent barcodes, continuous mail tracking, and real-time feedback to business customers. These services, referred to as Intelligent Mail®, will be fully operational for all commercial mailers by 2009.

The centerpiece of the technology is one standardized intelligent barcode used on each piece of mail (letters and large envelopes known as “flats”) as well as each mail container. As these travel through the postal network, and are scanned at key points, the technology enables business customers to ”see” their mail at every step — from arrival at the postal facility to processing to transportation to delivery.

The Intelligent Mail process is fully automated. Customers provide advance notification of each shipment electronically, enabling the Postal Service to better match appropriate resources. Verification — checking address quality, pre-sorting accuracy, and postage — also is automated instead of performed manually.

This sophisticated system enables real-time data to be captured and communicated — identifying problems such as bad addresses and improper pre-sort and feeding the information back to the mailers for correction.

The new system also provides real-time data to improve service measurement, enabling the Postal Service to pinpoint problems immediately, rather than receive evaluations from outside sources after the fact.