Opinion: Closing USPS’ Reno center will create more postal issues
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the Dec. 2, 2011, Reno Gazette-Journal.
Forty years ago, Federal Express (now FedEx) discovered that there was money to be made by promising shippers that a parcel sent today could be in its recipient’s hands tomorrow … anywhere in the country.
In those same 40 years, the U.S. mail has gotten slower, not faster, even as the cost of stamps has steadily increased. For Northern Nevadans, it will get even slower if a proposal to close the Reno sorting center is accepted by U.S. Postal Service officials.
The Postal Service’s answer to its serious financial problems seems to be making service worse rather than better.
The result will be to chase away even more customers — to email, bill-paying services and to FedEx or UPS — until there’s no one left to prop up a dying service.
Before the USPS closes the Reno center and sends all local mail to Sacramento for sorting, including mail that has to be sent right back to Nevada, Congress should insist that the quasi-governmental agency complete a top-to-bottom rethinking of its mission and how it can meet it many years into the future. Right now, it is clearly heading in the wrong direction.
The Postal Service’s problems are very real. It is losing money by the bucket load, and the model first put into place by Benjamin Franklin more than two centuries ago clearly doesn’t work anymore.
Raise prices and reduce services. Now that’s a sure fire way to improve your bottom line, isn’t it? Only to the government monopolist brain. . . In hard times in the REAL world, we reduce prices and increase service to bring in more business. I almost feel bad for all the people who figured that if they just stuck it out at the post office (or the city desk, or the meter-maid scooter) for 30 years they’d be able to retire one day and travel the world. It’s not working out that way.
Years ago, Tahoe mail, with some FEW exceptions, went to Sacramento for sorting. Then, with much fanfare, prounouncements of improved service, and some local wailing, the mail sorting went to Reno. At which time, service SLOWED in several ways, which has remained.
Note here that I do NOT expect faster mail service if our Tahoe mail goes to Sacramento for sorting.
The Postal Service is a vast bureaucracy that moves at a snail’s pace, then, occasionaly, makes some sudden change, which typically amounts to very little in the scheme of things. Haven’t we all learned about Big Government?
Dogwoman, I would love to hear your plan. The challenge, you have to deliver mail to every home in America, but the number of pieces of mail is reduced by 30 percent and you have about 50 percent more capacity than you need. You are going bankrupt because of reduced sales. How do you fix that?
If someone thinks the general business response to the current economic climate has been to reduce prices AND increase service, then clearly they have not been interacting with utility companies, airlines, and a variety of retail chains.
For years and years the post office made a profit – something no other government agency was either mandated to do or few actually did. Yes, use of mail has certainly changed and fixed mailing rates (it costs you the same amount to send a letter across town as across the country)certainly challenge profitibility. Saturday closures would probably go a long way to reducing costs, but this requires congressional action, not adminisrative action.
But I am sick and tired of people’s knee-jerk reaction that everything a government agency does is financially unsound. It wasn’t government spending that almost brought down the US banking system, it was corporate greed and borderline illegal (and certainly morally reprehensible) practices.
What is interesting concerning declining mail volume is has any company that hooked you into paperless billing ever offered discounts for customers willing to waive access to a printed (hence mailed) bill? Watch this go the way of the ATM, which was pushed and pushed by banks as it greatly cut payroll costs for banks, then seen as a cash cow. Soon enough, when you cant get your bill by mail, we are going to have to pay to get it at all – just as absurd as paying to get back your own money that you lent to the bank, will be the absurdity of having to pay extra to see how much you owe someone for their services.
Economics aside, we need to rethink and deal with the unintended consequences of over-reliance on digital media to communicate. It’s about more than junk mail!
Citizen Kane –
You said…
“But I am sick and tired of people’s knee-jerk reaction that everything a government agency does is financially unsound. It wasn’t government spending that almost brought down the US banking system, it was corporate greed and borderline illegal (and certainly morally reprehensible) practices.”
Government regulators that have a big hand in the banking collapse – BIG PART OF THE EQUATION
Freddy and Fanny both are democrat minions
Mortgages and insurance contracts are all regulated by the government.
You need to do more learning on that…
I am not saying that the progressive liberals that run big corporations are not part of the problem but don’t tell me it wasn’t government too.
Many from both sides deserve prison.
Since the initial collapse OBAMA and the Dems have made everything MUCH MUCH WORSE!
.Maybe not cognitive dissonance… more like Dunning-Kruger Effect …
Smugley Butler, you’re so. . .smed.
Ouch! now that’s gonna leave a mark.