The Amazon Prime, UPS and FedEx trucks carrying packages to millions of American homes and businesses might just also be the hearses symbolically transporting the United State Postal Office to its final resting place.
Tardy letters and financial documents, holiday package delays, disappearing mail boxes — the litany of complaints piling like a February blizzard on top of the Postal Service has prompted congressional review hearings, criticism of controversial Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and “Delivering for America,” the Postal Service’s 10-year plan to save itself.
The plan claims the Postal Service is struggling to deliver a sharp increase in package volume even as mail volume has dropped by 42 percent since 2007.
That statistic alone is daunting and spells danger for the 246-year-old institution that prides itself on reliable delivery no matter the weather or location.
The biggest problem for the Postal Service is that Amazon has redefined the retail industry by coupling the ease of online ordering with the efficiency of a mega-sized retail distribution and delivery system.
Combine that business model with the COVID-19 pandemic’s enforced isolation and you have an economy dependent on reliable and speedy package delivery.
You might think that the institution credited for perfecting reliable delivery would excel at it in the 21st century. Not so. In fact, the Postal Service has failed so dismally that “Delivering for America” warns postal employees from DeJoy to the neighborhood letter carrier that “our organization is in crisis.”
The 10-year-plan proposes revenue-generating and cost-cutting plans to keep the Postal Service alive. A proposal to widen the time range for first-class delivery from one to three days to one to five days angered critics who say it will affect timely prescription and financial document deliveries.
The Postal Service defends the proposal by claiming 70 percent of deliveries will still be done within three days.
Back in grade school, a 70 percent success rate translated into a grade of C-. It’s hard to imagine the Postal Service surviving against major package delivery firms if it can’t at least rate a B+ on delivery-success rates.
Perhaps the Postal Service’s survival rests with stripping down its operations to delivering paper documents and getting out of the package business. Amazon’s relentless pursuit of efficiency and the accelerated popularity of online financial transactions is sure to continue whittling down the Postal Service’s share of the delivery business.
“Delivering for America,” is the name of the Postal Service’s 10-year-plan. A better motto might be, “Doing less, but being the best.”
