Tag: USPS

A presidential commission recommended a series of changes to the U.S. Postal Service, including expanding efforts to move basic postal services out of traditional post offices and into banks, groceries or drug stores.

In a 181-page report, passed after eight months of research, the commission suggests that once basic services become available elsewhere, the Postal Service should be able to reassess whether or not smaller offices are still necessary to fulfill the obligation each facility provides for its region. If not, according to the report, the Postal Service should be able to do away with an office as it sees fit.

A presidential commission is examining broad-based reforms to the 736,000-person U.S. Postal Service. Among the proposals: letting the USPS slash prices in the summer, when mail volume drops, and offering discounts to merchants who pick up parcels at the post office rather than wait for delivery.

Proponents of the reform hope it will stabilize the troubled USPS, which lost $676 million in 2002 and amassed $11 billion in debt to the U.S. Treasury.

Recommendations by a federal study panel to cut back on small- town post offices and establish new services in malls, banks and grocery stories will produce an inevitable backlash. After all, if you lose your ZIP code, you’re nowhere, right?

Though the proposals may require people to use a different location for mail, it doesn’t make sense to keep spending millions of dollars to staff and maintain miniscule facilities that do very little business.

Alpine Air Express Inc. with its operating subsidiary Alpine Air, a leading provider of regional air cargo transport and logistics services, announced that it has received notice from the U.S. Postal Service that its previous decision to not award Alpine Air new contracts under its AMOT transportation plan has been reversed. The U.S. Postal Service has subsequently decided to award the contract to Alpine.

A presidential commission is recommending that money-losing post offices, many in small towns, be closed and that the Postal Service be given more freedom to change rates.

The President’s Commission on the United States Postal Service, appointed by President Bush to make recommendations on the future of the postal services, began voting on proposals today.

While the commission rejects the idea of making the Postal Service a private company, several of its recommendations could have far-reaching impact on virtually all Americans if they are accepted by Congress and the president. The commission is to deliver its final report by the end of the month.