If the USPS goes bankrupt, what will happen to mail services?

[Tap]

If the USPS goes bankrupt, what will happen to mail services? 

There used to be a trickle of information in the news about this from time to time.. Now I read about it more and more. It always seemed like such an unfathomable idea.....but unless this is all sensationalism, I am being to wonder if the end is actually coming.  Not trying to be crass, but could Covid-19 actually  be what kills the USPS? 

I know they have been faltering for a long time. Is this a legit concern that they could actually stop providing delivery of mail?  USPS employees are under the federal umbrella for some benefits, but I don't think they are considered full federal workers (please correct me if I am wrong). So, if it does close, do they have a level of job protection, or will it just be 'here is your severance, see ya!" 

So sad. But I  guess it will happen eventually. DD13 wrote and mailed her first letter the other day (that wasn't a school project). It is so foreign to think that her kids, may not have the experience of dropping a stamped letter in a blue box.  Or checking the mail box at the end of the road every day. 

[Tanaqui]

It's not coronavirus killing the USPS, it's - no joke, no exaggeration - a cabal in the government that actively hates any proof that the government can run anything better than private companies and which has been trying to destroy the USPS for decades. The right people to bring your complaints and concerns to, therefore, are your own elected congresscritters.

[Tap]

11 minutes ago, Tanaqui said:

It's not coronavirus killing the USPS, it's - no joke, no exaggeration - a cabal in the government that actively hates any proof that the government can run anything better than private companies and which has been trying to destroy the USPS for decades. The right people to bring your complaints and concerns to, therefore, are your own elected congresscritters.

I know it has been failing for a long time, but it seems like the virus is bringing it to an abrupt halt. 

[J-rap]

2 hours ago, Tap said:

I know it has been failing for a long time, but it seems like the virus is bringing it to an abrupt halt. 

What changes have you seen due to the virus?  I haven't seen any changes in our area, and in fact, friends and family seem to be using the USPS more than ever right now -- sending birthday cards in the mail to make a birthday feel more special since they can't see each other in person, etc.  I'm still getting packages through the USPS, sending letters to my kids out of state, etc.  I get mail almost every day.

That said, I do know it is struggling, and it does seem outdated in so many ways.  I think that at some point (not now), the USPS could slowly phase out (leaving letter delivery, etc., to private companies I guess), or at least make major changes.   Or, another alternative that we can't even imagine at this point might take its place.   I'm surprised by the number of bulk mail catalogs I still get in the mail!  That seems weird to me.

But currently, too many people still depend on the mail for important things.  I think the government will make sure it continues for now, no matter what.

It's interesting to think how much it has changed over time.  I know my mother's generation used to get deliveries twice/day -- once in the morning and again in the afternoon!

[Carrie12345]

While I am a sucker for nostalgia, I don’t think I understand enough to think of it as such a big deal.  But I also haven’t had a home mailbox in nearly 15 years!  I begrudgingly stop at group mailboxes a couple of times a week to grab my 99% junk mail. For the first few years of living here, I didn’t have a spot in the group mailboxes, so I had to drive 6 miles each way (not on the route to any other errands) to get junk mail, and a few times a year I still have to go if a signature is required or all of the parcel boxes are full.

Once a year, I go to the PO to send my homeschool paperwork, and sometimes send a package or two at the holidays, though I used the UPS store this past year.

My big question is, if USPS ends, will companies finally quit sending me junk mail???  I figure UPS and others will likely offer reasonably priced letter service, but hopefully not cheap enough to keep all the bs flowing.

[Pawz4me]

52 minutes ago, J-rap said:

What changes have you seen due to the virus?  I haven't seen any changes in our area, and in fact, friends and family seem to be using the USPS more than ever right now -- sending birthday cards in the mail to make a birthday feel more special since they can't see each other in person, etc.  I'm still getting packages through the USPS, sending letters to my kids out of state, etc.  I get mail almost every day.

That said, I do know it is struggling, and it does seem outdated in so many ways.  I think that at some point (not now), the USPS could slowly phase out (leaving letter delivery, etc., to private companies I guess), or at least make major changes.   Or, another alternative that we can't even imagine at this point might take its place.   I'm surprised by the number of bulk mail catalogs I still get in the mail!  That seems weird to me.

But currently, too many people still depend on the mail for important things.  I think the government will make sure it continues for now, no matter what.

It's interesting to think how much it has changed over time.  I know my mother's generation used to get deliveries twice/day -- once in the morning and again in the afternoon!

Reportedly first class mail volume is down drastically due to so many businesses being closed down. And first class mail is where the USPS makes most of its money.

 

[J-rap]

6 hours ago, Pawz4me said:

Reportedly first class mail volume is down drastically due to so many businesses being closed down. And first class mail is where the USPS makes most of its money.

 

Ah, that makes perfect sense.

[stephanier.1765]

My dh is a carrier and he is working late every day because of the volume of mail, most of which is packages. Hopefully during this time, the higher volume of packages will help offset the decrease in first class mail. I had to go to the PO last week and the line to get inside went out the door. People were mailing packages, buying stamps, getting money orders...it was crazy in there.

[Tap]

5 minutes ago, stephanier.1765 said:

My dh is a carrier and he is working late every day because of the volume of mail, most of which is packages. Hopefully during this time, the higher volume of packages will help offset the decrease in first class mail. I had to go to the PO last week and the line to get inside went out the door. People were mailing packages, buying stamps, getting money orders...it was crazy in there.

That is great to hear! I worry about a lot of the 55yo and up, who if they lose their USPS job, will really struggle to get another job. To young to retire, but over the age where employers like to hire.

[stephanier.1765]

2 minutes ago, Tap said:

That is great to hear! I worry about a lot of the 55yo and up, who if they lose their USPS job, will really struggle to get another job. To young to retire, but over the age where employers like to hire.

I worry about that too. He could take early retirement but it wouldn't be a liveable amount of money and, as you said, who hires folks that old at a wage they can live on.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

 

 I think that at some point (not now), the USPS could slowly phase out (leaving letter delivery, etc., to private companies I guess), or at least make major changes.

 

 

Do you realize that private companies such as FedEx actually outsource to the USPS?

[Murphy101]

12 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

It's not coronavirus killing the USPS, it's - no joke, no exaggeration - a cabal in the government that actively hates any proof that the government can run anything better than private companies and which has been trying to destroy the USPS for decades. The right people to bring your complaints and concerns to, therefore, are your own elected congresscritters.

I agree. And it is stupidly short sighted. There needs to be a federal protected method of communication and mail delivery that every citizen has a legal right to and that is protected from private third party use.  Currently that is USPS.

If you don’t want junk mail - you can fill out a form online to refuse it.  Truth is, most people do like getting their grocery flyers and such in the mail.

And it’s hard to beat the price of mailing USPS most of the time.

[happi duck]

USPS does not receive taxes but something to do with pensions is mandated by the government and iirc is the biggest issue.

In areas where there is door-to-door delivery letter carriers can be the ones who notice when something is amiss.  Who else walks down a residential street everyday?

USPS charges the same whether sending a letter a mile or thousands of miles.  It really is a marvel!

My late sister was a letter carrier and my bil is one now.  

I ❤ real mail!

[kbutton]

My dad was a letter carrier also. It's my understanding that every time the post office has any kind of profit or does well, the money ends up going elsewhere (vs. staying in the postal system budget), but if they fail to make a profit, they are raked over the coals.

The other parcel carriers won't deliver everywhere the post office does because it's not profitable.

26 minutes ago, happi duck said:

In areas where there is door-to-door delivery letter carriers can be the ones who notice when something is amiss.  Who else walks down a residential street everyday?

Some know more than a kid's school teacher knows (since so many people are talking about kids at risk because the school would intervene and know if something bad were happening). My dad literally kept a few people alive on his route. 

[Janeway]

It is like the telegraph....eventually not needed. And in light of the poor job they do, they will be gone before places like UPS and Fedex. I do not think they bring in enough to pay their own bills so they will be gone eventually. I do not have a problem with it.

[sweet2ndchance]

20 minutes ago, kbutton said:

My dad was a letter carrier also. It's my understanding that every time the post office has any kind of profit or does well, the money ends up going elsewhere (vs. staying in the postal system budget), but if they fail to make a profit, they are raked over the coals.

The other parcel carriers won't deliver everywhere the post office does because it's not profitable.

Some know more than a kid's school teacher knows (since so many people are talking about kids at risk because the school would intervene and know if something bad were happening). My dad literally kept a few people alive on his route. 

Dh's grandmother is a rural route carrier and she is much the same way. She enjoys her job because she gets to check in on people and make sure they are ok 5 - 6 days a week. If nothing else, she is busier than ever right now because of all the extra mail, not a lack of it. In larger cities, it might be cheaper, easier, and faster to use UPS or FedEx but on her rural route, UPS and FedEx won't go where she has to go (and trust me, no one envies what the unmaintained county roads do to her personal vehicle that she uses on her route. She easily spends $10k a year or more on maintenance and repairs a year). If you want to send something to someone out here in the boonies, USPS is pretty much your only option.

So many of the things we order because there is literally nowhere around here that sells this item or that item come drop shipped by FedEx to the local post office and then are delivered to the individual by the postal carriers. It seems like more and more Amazon sellers are using that, I'm guessing because it is cheaper. When I buy used curriculum or books on Amazon, that is almost always how it is shipped anymore.

[Frances]

11 hours ago, J-rap said:

What changes have you seen due to the virus?  I haven't seen any changes in our area, and in fact, friends and family seem to be using the USPS more than ever right now -- sending birthday cards in the mail to make a birthday feel more special since they can't see each other in person, etc.  I'm still getting packages through the USPS, sending letters to my kids out of state, etc.  I get mail almost every day.

That said, I do know it is struggling, and it does seem outdated in so many ways.  I think that at some point (not now), the USPS could slowly phase out (leaving letter delivery, etc., to private companies I guess), or at least make major changes.   Or, another alternative that we can't even imagine at this point might take its place.   I'm surprised by the number of bulk mail catalogs I still get in the mail!  That seems weird to me.

But currently, too many people still depend on the mail for important things.  I think the government will make sure it continues for now, no matter what.

It's interesting to think how much it has changed over time.  I know my mother's generation used to get deliveries twice/day -- once in the morning and again in the afternoon!

The biggest change I would like to see is no Saturday delivery, but post offices are open on Saturday. I don’t think we need delivery six days per week, but it sure would be nice to have a post office open when I’m not at work.

[Tanaqui]

30 minutes ago, Janeway said:

It is like the telegraph....eventually not needed. And in light of the poor job they do, they will be gone before places like UPS and Fedex. I do not think they bring in enough to pay their own bills so they will be gone eventually. I do not have a problem with it.

 

The USPS doesn't do a particularly poor job - and remember, they do a lot of the carrying *for* UPS and Fedex! -  and other than the requirement that they pre-fund all their pensions for decades in advance, they really would turn a profit. (Especially if we did what other nations do and run a national bank through the USPS, which would additionally help a great many unbanked households manage their money a little better.)

NOT that "paying their own bills" should be the goal of any federal agency, no more than we expect the highways to "pay their own bills" or the public schools to "pay their own bills". This is where our taxes are supposed to go. If you think UPS or Fedex does so well, so cheaply, just consider how much more it would cost and where they'd cut service if they couldn't dump their packages on the USPS to deliver.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Tanaqui

[happi duck]

2 hours ago, Janeway said:

It is like the telegraph....eventually not needed. And in light of the poor job they do, they will be gone before places like UPS and Fedex. I do not think they bring in enough to pay their own bills so they will be gone eventually. I do not have a problem with it.

They are hampered by federal requirements while not receiving tax money.

I can leave a letter for my carrier and for 50 and some odd cents get that letter across the country in a day or two.

I have sent packages to places that no other carrier will consider.

I'm not sure I can remember ever having something I sent lost or damaged.  I do remember a package I ordered taking a few days longer than expected but my letter carrier delivered it on Christmas Eve so it was in time...first world problem anyway.

Your carrier might not be checking up on you but I can practically guarantee they check up on *somebody* on their route.

I am definitely proUSPS but not just for family reasons.  

[Ottakee]

4 hours ago, happi duck said:

USPS does not receive taxes but something to do with pensions is mandated by the government and iirc is the biggest issue.

In areas where there is door-to-door delivery letter carriers can be the ones who notice when something is amiss.  Who else walks down a residential street everyday?

USPS charges the same whether sending a letter a mile or thousands of miles.  It really is a marvel!

My late sister was a letter carrier and my bil is one now.  

I ❤ real mail!

I am thankful for my mom's letter carrier.  She lives alone and is in a wheelchair.  They check in with her every day and would likely know before I do that something is amiss....she gets up after I start work and they stop in mid morning.

[Janeway]

1 hour ago, happi duck said:

They are hampered by federal requirements while not receiving tax money.

I can leave a letter for my carrier and for 50 and some odd cents get that letter across the country in a day or two.

I have sent packages to places that no other carrier will consider.

I'm not sure I can remember ever having something I sent lost or damaged.  I do remember a package I ordered taking a few days longer than expected but my letter carrier delivered it on Christmas Eve so it was in time...first world problem anyway.

Your carrier might not be checking up on you but I can practically guarantee they check up on *somebody* on their route.

I am definitely proUSPS but not just for family reasons.  

In our area, when the USPS is delivering it, there is maybe a 50% chance of getting it. My grandma keeps sending the children birthday cards and I keep telling her maybe not to. Sometimes we get them, even though she is definitely sending them. When an Amazon package does not show, I can see it was a pass off to USPS. Recently, I had two deliveries by USPS of completely different sized and shaped packages, but used the same exact picture. Sometimes, we will go days with no mail. Sometimes, we get mail late at night. Sometimes, we even get our own mail. I have seen the mail person around after 10pm.  I think maybe we get mail about 4 times a week. Our neighborhood got together and got ourselves on alerts where our email tells us what is coming. Mail comes more often now. The post office never cares. We have lived here almost 13 years and have gone up to over 3 weeks without mail and the post office does not care. Seems the carrier picks up the mail but then doesn't bother to deliver for a few days. We get mail sometimes on Sundays.  I pay the extra to have anything I buy to come via Fedex or UPS when possible just because if I am ordering it, I want to actually get it.

[Janeway]

8 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

 Perhaps you can explain the poor job that they do? Do you understand how having to pre-fund their pensions for 50 years cost them? Can you tell me why that was asked of them, only them and no other gov’t entity? 

Are you saying they do a good job just because they give pensions to their employees? Because, whatever is going on with how they pay their employees, if their service is junk, it does not matter. I get that in some parts of the country, especially rural areas, the postal service is fine and great. But that is just not the case where I live.

[kbutton]

15 minutes ago, Dotwithaperiod said:

Once again, this is a partisan act, spoken about now because of the increasing talk of voting by mail in the general election. Keep your eyes on the important matters, they are trying to deflect away from unpleasant information.

Hadn't thought of that. Ugh. 

3 minutes ago, Janeway said:

In our area, when the USPS is delivering it, there is maybe a 50% chance of getting it. My grandma keeps sending the children birthday cards and I keep telling her maybe not to. Sometimes we get them, even though she is definitely sending them. When an Amazon package does not show, I can see it was a pass off to USPS. Recently, I had two deliveries by USPS of completely different sized and shaped packages, but used the same exact picture. Sometimes, we will go days with no mail. Sometimes, we get mail late at night. Sometimes, we even get our own mail. I have seen the mail person around after 10pm.  I think maybe we get mail about 4 times a week. Our neighborhood got together and got ourselves on alerts where our email tells us what is coming. Mail comes more often now. The post office never cares. We have lived here almost 13 years and have gone up to over 3 weeks without mail and the post office does not care. Seems the carrier picks up the mail but then doesn't bother to deliver for a few days. We get mail sometimes on Sundays.  I pay the extra to have anything I buy to come via Fedex or UPS when possible just because if I am ordering it, I want to actually get it.

You can take it up the chain and complain to higher ups. I think there is an 800 number.

[happi duck]

15 minutes ago, Janeway said:

In our area, when the USPS is delivering it, there is maybe a 50% chance of getting it. My grandma keeps sending the children birthday cards and I keep telling her maybe not to. Sometimes we get them, even though she is definitely sending them. When an Amazon package does not show, I can see it was a pass off to USPS. Recently, I had two deliveries by USPS of completely different sized and shaped packages, but used the same exact picture. Sometimes, we will go days with no mail. Sometimes, we get mail late at night. Sometimes, we even get our own mail. I have seen the mail person around after 10pm.  I think maybe we get mail about 4 times a week. Our neighborhood got together and got ourselves on alerts where our email tells us what is coming. Mail comes more often now. The post office never cares. We have lived here almost 13 years and have gone up to over 3 weeks without mail and the post office does not care. Seems the carrier picks up the mail but then doesn't bother to deliver for a few days. We get mail sometimes on Sundays.  I pay the extra to have anything I buy to come via Fedex or UPS when possible just because if I am ordering it, I want to actually get it.

That is awful and shocking service!  In 10 plus moves including different states and regions I have never had bad mail service.  That is truly shocking and I'd be angry but it is not representative of the USPS as a whole.

[Farrar]

The thing is, it is still needed. There are key medicines and other services that come through the mail. Things that serve people who are not served by other infrastructure and that there is zero profit in for private corporations. And it's a service that is worth supporting. The USPS mostly breaks even. We need to fix this.

And we need mail in ballots this year and this is definitely connected.

[Katy]

This has happened several times.  Congress always approves increasing postage rates to save them. 

They have crazy union rules too (and I'm generally pro-union). At our last home I had to take something to the post office on a summer day.  There was a line out the door but there was literally three parking spaces that had been repainted that were cordoned off and a uniformed employee was sitting in the middle of this area in a lawn chair to ensure no one messed with the paint.  They were literally paying someone to watch paint dry while the line stretched out the door to the parking lot.

[Tanaqui]

I think it's 75 years they have to pre-fund the pension and health benefits, not 50. That's why they aren't consistently in the black, Janeway.

And it does sound like your area has particularly bad service! But... not everybody is as bad off as that. I happen to know for a fact that we're at the tail end of the longest route in the area, and I've complained about our mail service before, but the most that happens is once in a while we get mail for a nearby street or we don't get a bill we ought to have gotten, or very occasionally they don't deliver a package today, they wait until the next day rather than haul it up our porch steps. I wonder if your neighborhood has one or two particularly bad mail carriers and that's where the problem lies.

[Tanaqui]

Quote

I’vehad crappy mailmen. I’ve got one now, tho I think he’s temporarily working while my old guy stays healthy. I’m a democrat. I get a lot of political mail. This mailman throws nearly every piece of political mail on the ground by my box. I reported him, then found his boss’s boss. Eventually you’ll find someone who cares.Keep hounding them about their mistakes. That’s an individual post office problem, not an overall USPS defect.

 

Yes, sometimes complaining works! Many years ago all the Staten Island buses were marked up with sharpie'd Bible verses. Which IS graffiti, and finally I got fed up and complained, specifying that it was ALL the buses and I was sure it must be somebody at the depot. And within a month it was gone and never came back, and if I'd known making a single complaint would do so much good I'd've done it earlier.

And the MTA, believe me, is not as well-run as the post office. If the MTA can root out (or at least stop) one or two bad employees in response to a rider complaint, the USPS can root out one or two bad mail carriers who shirk and shirk.

[Pawz4me]

3 hours ago, Tanaqui said:

I think it's 75 years they have to pre-fund the pension and health benefits, not 50.

That's my understanding, too.

[Carrie12345]

12 hours ago, sweet2ndchance said:

Dh's grandmother is a rural route carrier and she is much the same way. She enjoys her job because she gets to check in on people and make sure they are ok 5 - 6 days a week. If nothing else, she is busier than ever right now because of all the extra mail, not a lack of it. In larger cities, it might be cheaper, easier, and faster to use UPS or FedEx but on her rural route, UPS and FedEx won't go where she has to go (and trust me, no one envies what the unmaintained county roads do to her personal vehicle that she uses on her route. She easily spends $10k a year or more on maintenance and repairs a year). If you want to send something to someone out here in the boonies, USPS is pretty much your only option.

So many of the things we order because there is literally nowhere around here that sells this item or that item come drop shipped by FedEx to the local post office and then are delivered to the individual by the postal carriers. It seems like more and more Amazon sellers are using that, I'm guessing because it is cheaper. When I buy used curriculum or books on Amazon, that is almost always how it is shipped anymore.

It never stops amazing me how different things are in different areas.
Here, FedEx, UPS, Amazon Smiles, etc. all come to the door, but USPS is not allowed. When Amazon began shipping my kitty litter USPS, I had to switch to Chewy because the box was too big for group parcel boxes and I had to spend 45 minutes of my day retrieving it from the PO.  Before they redid the system giving our group boxes street addresses, I couldn’t order anything from places that required a USPS street address because we didn’t have one.
While Amazon does send some things USPS, it’s primarily other services here.

[Farrar]

My mail carrier comes to the door for sure, but we have a mail slot.

I get the idea that the USPS can really be crappy. My post office is one of the worst in my region. They are infamous. I drive to a different one rather than walking to ours, where I was once third in line and had to wait more than an hour to get served. My mail often gets delivered at 9 pm. My mailman mutters at us and refused to hand my kids the mail if they were in the front yard (no way he doesn't recognize them - same dude for like 15 years now).

But none of that negates the need for the USPS overall. We need it. Small businesses rely on them. In rural areas, they are a lifeline to services for some people. The protection they provide for the mail is unequaled by private business for the price (even if, as I'm sure you do, you have a story about a time it wasn't perfect). It just needs to be bailed out.

I saw the suggestion that if you'd like to do something, go buy some Forever stamps. They won't expire.

[happi duck]

One of my late sisters was a letter carrier and she was the most faithful sender of greeting cards.  In memory of her for her birthday I send a bunch of cards.  This year I'm adding in buying a bunch of stamps!

[Scarlett]

Overall I have always had good mail service.  When we moved into town in November I started noticing missing letters.  One should have been forwarded and another was addressed to our new house.  They never have shown up.  So that is discouraging.  I thought about complaining....but just waiting to see if it irons itself out.

[Guest]

Also, right now you can mail to military overseas for domestic rates. Can you imagine how much more it would cost to send cookies (or whatever) to someone stationed in the Middle East if we had to do it Fed Ex?? That's a service where USPS doesn't pay for itself, but I am personally glad to have my tax dollars help subsidize.

[Tanaqui]

5 minutes ago, dmmetler said:

Also, right now you can mail to military overseas for domestic rates. Can you imagine how much more it would cost to send cookies (or whatever) to someone stationed in the Middle East if we had to do it Fed Ex?? That's a service where USPS doesn't pay for itself, but I am personally glad to have my tax dollars help subsidize.

 

Agreed, though I should point out that your tax dollars don't subsidize this either. The USPS doesn't receive any subsidies, and not one penny of your taxes goes towards supporting it.

[Guest]

Just now, Tanaqui said:

 

Agreed, though I should point out that your tax dollars don't subsidize this either. The USPS doesn't receive any subsidies, and not one penny of your taxes goes towards supporting it.

But if we need to subsidize the USPS through this crisis, let's do it.