A year after the anthrax-by-mail crisis, the U.S. Postal Service has abandoned its plans of installing expensive electron-beam devices in many mail sorting facilities to zap harmful bacteria.
The agency says it has since shifted its goal toward finding hand-held devices that would allow postal carriers to detect harmful materials, much the way a Geiger counter detects radiation.
Read MoreThe United States Postal Service, in partnership with the Mobile Source Air Pollution Reduction Review Committee (MSRC), the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power (LADWP) and the Coalition for Clean Air, will join together today to roll out the nation’s largest fleet of electric vehicles.
Read MoreThe U.S. Postal Service may begin charging penalties in November to First-Class mailers who do not comply with the agency’s Move Update rules, the postal service said last week.
Move Update, which began in 1997, is designed to reduce undelivered-as-addressed mail, which reportedly costs the postal service $1.8 billion a year. Mailers using automation or presort rates are required to update addresses every 180 days with a USPS-approved method such as the Address Change Service, National Change of Address or FastForward.
The U.S. Postal Service’s ride-along program has generated $15 million in revenue since is inception in February of 2000, said Vito Fortuna, a sales specialist with the agency’s New York metro area direct marketing team, at a “Power Breakfast” sponsored by the team here yesterday.
The purpose of the breakfast was to present mail-based marketing strategies to publishers and direct marketers in the New York area.
Thanks to an aggressive campaign of cost-cutting, including a major cut in staff, the Postal Service is finishing the fiscal year in better financial condition than anticipated.
Postmaster General John E. Potter said Friday the agency expects to finish the fiscal year this month with a $1.2 billion loss.
The post office had expected to lose $1.35 billion for the year, and at times after the terrorist attacks and anthrax-by-mail contamination, loss estimates threatened to reach several billion dollars.
In addition to the improvement this year, continued cost-cutting and the rate increase that took effect this summer are expected to push the post office into the black in 2003 with a profit of $600 million, he said.
Potter repeated his promise that postal rates won’t go up again until at least 2004.
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