Tag: USPS

US Postal Service reports surplus, rates should stay steady until 2006

Posted by | Dec 10, 2003 | |

The US Postal Service finished 2003 with a USD3.9 billion surplus, which will help keep postal rates where they are until 2006, postal officials said Tuesday. The bottom line was USD300 million better than had been expected for the 2003 fiscal year, which ended in September. Nearly all of the surplus was used to reduce the agency’s outstanding debt. The results will enable the Post Office to “help keep the commitment to hold the current rates stable through 2006,” Postmaster General John Potter told the agency’s board of governors. Chief financial officer Richard Strasser said the results were achieved despite a decline in first-class mail and noted that the Post Office had been able to make significant savings through a reduction in staff and other cost-cutting.

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Cost cuts help USPS end year in black

Posted by | Dec 9, 2003 | |

The U.S. Postal Service said deep cost cuts helped it finish $300 million in the black in 2003 despite a record decline in first-class mail volume. The net increase for the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 contrasted sharply with last year’s loss of $676 million, triggered by the largest-ever slide in overall mail volume.

The USPS will seek an $884 million federal appropriation for the fiscal year beginning next October, nearly all of it to help pay for ongoing automation upgrades to the mail processing system to guard against bioterror and other threats. Those changes were ordered after the deadly anthrax attacks in 2001.

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More direct mail similarities

Posted by | Nov 19, 2003 | |

Direct marketing in the U.S. is more similar to marketing in the U.K. and the rest of Europe than it is different. That’s the conclusion drawn from a session on multi-channel business at the European Catalogue and Mail Order Days here.
Jack Schmid, chairman of Kansas-based consultancy J. Schmid & Associates, kicked off the session with a few statistics regarding online sales growth: 64% of U.S. household are now connected to the Internet, according to Forrester Research, up from 25% five years ago. With the rise of e-commerce and multichannel shopping have come increased expectations on the part of buyers, he said: Nearly three-quarters of customers surveyed expect the companies they shop from to know about their behavior in all channels. In other words, if a customer phones a call center, he expects the CSR to know what he’d previously purchased from the company’s stores or Website as well as via phone.

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UPS trying to win USPS parcel traffic

Posted by | Nov 17, 2003 | |

UPS is trying to win parcel traffic away from the U.S. Postal Service and then give it right back.

The company is testing a new service called UPS Basic that will use the USPS’s own delivery network for the last leg of delivery in parts of United States, offering cost savings over regular postal and UPS Ground service in a bid to capture business from the USPS and consolidators.

The service marks a new step in the growing competition for ground delivery in the U.S. parcel market and FedEx says it is already talking with the Postal Service about a program of its own.

UPS and FedEx plan to exploit a provision in Postal Service operations that gives consolidators that deliver presorted parcels to postal facilities far cheaper rates than regular parcel shippers.

“This is a program that’s open to everyone,” Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan said. “And UPS has decided to take advantage of it. I don’t have an opinion. It’s neutral. It doesn’t matter. We’re delighted to have customers.”

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