Build back better proposes 6 billion to electrify post office fleet 70%
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...-dejoy-trucks/

I personally think this is a terrible buy. Not because the EVs aren't a good idea, but because it is taxpayer money subsidizing competition to the private sector. Even in this article they admit one need of the new trucks is so the USPS can carry more parcels. The parcel business is already 100% covered by many private companies. It's not "mail" IMO. So they make it easier to undercut FedEx, UPS, and others who have to buy their own trucks. Why shouldn't FedEx and UPS get 4-6 billion each to electrify their fleets? Then it also is bad for mainstreet business. It just makes it easier for Amazon, and big mail order Walmart.com or Target.com, to get lower and lower shipping rates to put more and more mom and pop shops out of business. If they had to foot the real cost of delivering a 40 pound bag of dog food to your door, few people would pay double the price of the object when you had to consider shipping. They would just make a weekly or monthly trip and buy a whole careful of products rather than shipping them one, by one, day after day. It's bad ecologically as well.

That may not be the worst of it. I see it being called '6uild 6ack 6etter'.

The post orifice could use electric vehicle for all but their most rual of routes.
The post office owns the small package business. Anything tiny, like 1 pound and smaller can go first class mail and it is a great deal. Then anything that can be stuffed in their flat rate boxes is also an excellent deal.
Did you know a thousand fired 5.56 shell casings fit nicely in a large fat rate box?
For me I only have to go 3 miles to mail off non hazardous packages that will fit in a flat rate box as opposed to 20 miles to do UPS or fedex.
But if I'm sending out live ammo then I have to use ups or fedex, usps doesn't want to touch anything midly hazardous. Live ammo is so dangerous when in its in original packing you can check 11lb of it per bag when you fly.

Besides all that, it also becomes another threat to freedom, serving as a case for a broader political push toward EVs.


Even though the larger retail chains are not actually taking over the mom and pop shops in my country, nowadays many small businesses are basically forced to join the e-commerce platforms of some larger chain in order to stay competitive.

I have no problem with small shops joining the e commerce, but what is terrible is they can't compete. USPS has special, secret, deals with Amazon where even a 40 pound bag of dog food in a 24x20x20" box ships for around $2. The mom and pop can't send a one pound 4x2x1" box across town for less than $4. The dog food would cost them probably $40. Now Amazon try's to claim "they do most of the work" and the post office just does the "last mile". Now what's more difficult putting 10,000 packages in a semi truck and driving them 200 miles to post office. Or unloading 10,000 packages, sorting them into 100 different routes, then loading 100 small trucks and distributing them over a 40 mile radius to a random 10,000 houses? Yeah, that's worth $20,000. It doesn't cover the hourly wages of the 10 sorting clerks, 100 carriers, and 5 supervisors. Well it does if you assume those 100 carriers were "going there anyway". So Amazon gets a free ride on grandma's cards or mom and pop shop sending $4-$100 packages. They also don't cover the cost of the now needed larger delivery vehicles, the increased injuries to workers, the future retirements, etc. Now the post office jumps through their hoops only to be ridden hard and put away wet. As soon as they figure it out and balance the rates, Amazon will just start their own delivery service not only hauling their own packages but give better rates to the mom and pops the PO screwed helping Amazon establish in the first place. Then the PO will have a shiny fleet of new EVs and no packages to fill them.

The EVs themselves won't be the biggest cost, the cost will be in the infrastructure we need to add. We have about 75 trucks in a small outdoor parking lot that also serves as a 10 bay semi freight terminal. Each truck would need at least a 240 volt level 2 charger. Seems at a minimum carports would be needed but more likely a whole new garage. So 75 $40,000 trucks is only 3 million. We spent 1.5 million just on new security at out office 3 years ago. Basically just fencing that parking lot and installing keyed gates and doors everywhere. A new garage for 75 trucks with 3000+ amp electrical service would be 20 million easy for the building and anything central located in out town would be another 10 million for the lot to put it on.

Letter carriers should have been in EVs a decade ago. Same with garbage trucks and School busses.

We'll have autonomous delivery soon enough, at which point weekly trips to stores will be a thing of the past. Amazon is going to deliver everything, for better and worse.

Keep in mind that the USPS’s largest three customers are UPS, FedEx and Amazon. And while they do discount to these three companies (more than they should IMO) they are still the USPS biggest revenue generators. Without them, the USPS would be an even bigger money loser.
And the costs to ship via UPS or FedEx reflect this partnership. If the USPS were to stop carrying packages “the last mile” for them and Amazon, shipping costs through them would be substantially higher.
And I can’t think of a better application fir EV’s than this. Back in the same lot every night after probably less then 100 miles a day. Perfect.

That's the line they try and feed everyone but it's just not true on the ground. We lose money on those cut rate deals it just doesn't show up in the books because they are still counting parcels as a fraction of the overall hours when in reality they are a majority of the hours. So without them we would yes have much less revenue but we would have even more less costs. Sure there would be less than 1/2 the people and you could close 1000s of facilities, but we would actually be self sufficient, just right sized for the job set out in the Constitution to do. Deliver mail.

Just charge by the ounce for everything, no presort deals, no volume deals, that's the way it was for 100 years+ and guess what, 100+ years of never in the red. Don't buy that prefunding mandate is to blame either. That isn't even being paid anymore and still we go deeper and deeper in debt every year. The first class mail volume has stabilized the last 5 years, the prefunding is over, and yet we lose more and more money every year. What's different? Parcel volumes are thru the roof and they don't pay their fair share of the actual workload.

Well as I stated in my post earlier, I agree that the discounts to the big three are too steep. They need to pay more.
But I don’t agree that going back to just 1st class mail would cut enough costs to make the service viable. They still need to be able to go to every
address every day.
Some combination of the higher wholesale prices for packages (which would in itself cut volume) and attracting the retail side of the shipping (where the money is) could help.
Irregardless, it’s still a perfect application for EVs.

I've been 'lobbying' (lol) my local post office about banking services for some time, and now I find this:

inthesetimes.com/article/postal-banking-post-office-apwu
A new profit center? Banks make out Okay.

It may be the perfect application but if so then it should pay for it self. Keep in mind this is 6 billion over and above the previous 6 billion for new trucks. So this is really 12 billion for 200,000 trucks, or $60,000 each.

I always wondered how private companies could compete considering the letter carrier comes every single day. How much extra would it cost for a package to be delivered along with the letters compared with a company that doesn't visit daily and delvers no letters?

Whoever can dispatch delivery drones from the roof of their fleet vehicle wins.

A few packages here and there no big deal. Say 20 over 700 stops. That's what it used to be. Now it's 150 every 700 stops on a light day and 300+ on a heavy day. UPS drivers don't delivery that many on a daily basis doing only packages in an 8 hour shift. So those days it's more like you have a little mail to deliver with the packages and on a normal day it's 40% packages filling your time. Keep in mind I can do literally 50 letters and maybe 10 stops for just letters as fast as one package. If the package needs a signature double or triple that time.

Without the packages all together they could probably double the length of most routes meaning only 1/2 the workforce would be needed. Cut our labor costs in 1/2 and take out all the parcel revenue and we would be into the black instead of almost 10 billion a year in the red.

You're a government agency, it is a public benefit service, there should be no need for profit excepting that a poop pot load of people hate having government pay for anything. Make junk mail pay it's way.

That explains nothing, because my premise (which is likely flawed), is that someone already stopping at every house can add packages to the route for lower cost than sending out special deliveries everywhere. Not only that, but the USPS is non-profit, so there's no high dollar executives to pay.

If adding packages means less of a route can be completed, that simply means the routes have to be shortened and more carriers added.

Oh most definitely it's faster to do the mail with the packages than sending 2 trucks over the same territory. Just the travel time alone to and from the hub not delivering anything. Say onbthe average day you would spend 4 hours on parcels if you did them separately and 6 hours on mail for 10 hours for 2 trucks, but one guy does it in 9 combined. Also one guy only has 2 breaks where 2 guys have 4 breaks, and the mentioned travel time. Makes 2 more like 12 hours and one about 10. The parcel rates and deals were set when it was more like a 10% parcel to 90% mail split so they pay 10% of the operating and legacy costs while the rest of the mail pays 90%. The problem is rasing that to say 40% of the costs would put the rates at FedEx and UPS or even higher and the volume would drop back down to more like the 10%.

But that is what's not fair to the competition, we are subsidizing package rates which is not a constitutional public service, with the letter mail which is.

Not directed at you but just throwing it out. If the packages are necessary for the public good why charge anything at all. If profits don't matter, just print money with all the other spending and make mail and packages free to send with the PO. UPS and the others would be out of business overnight. Even moving companies would be effected as people just box their stuff up and mail it to their new home. 1/2 the semis on the road would suddenly be carrying mail paid for by the general population rather than freight paid for by the specific customer that wanted it.

Every peice of mail and packages we carry needs to pay it's own way, including new trucks EV or not. Let the chips fall where they may, if the PO gets smaller and more efficient so be it. We are just not set up to be a package operation and it would take more trucks, more processing plants, a fleet of cargo jets, etc. They are just getting abused by the other companies playing the last mile game because that's all we are capable of handling and it's the biggest money loser for those companies and us too.

My allegiance to efficiency simply won't let this one go. Why does the USPS truck pass by, then the FedEx truck, then the UPS truck... why are there at least 3 trucks all sharing the same function; delivering packages (not to mention Amazon deliveries).

From an efficiency standpoint, I want a single truck to deliver the letters and parcels. We don't need 3 or 4 trucks doing what a single one can accomplish.

Perhaps UPS and FedEx should be relegated to delivering between businesses, with residential served by someone else. Either Amazon needs to ship through USPS, or USPS should contract with Amazon to deliver the letters. I tend to think the latter since Amazon has the profit incentive to run as efficiently as possible, though their size is troubling.

The post office could do haircuts, and mammograms too, or any number of things. But why? Those services are already provided well by the free market. Why not just let the government run the banks, the grocery stores, the trucking, the housing, etc? It's been tried many times before in many different places always with the same failed outcome in the end.

And about the 3 trucks coming to you house, that's competition. Without it it may be more efficient but it will cost more. Why not just have one company make all the cars and trucks of the world. One small, one medium, one big. Super efficient way to provide vehicles. No competition would make them crap. Workers would have no incentive to build them well or quickly. Again it's been tried and it leads to terrible products and service.

I'm trying to remember the last time I bought a haircut. I think it was the 1990s.

The Post Office has never offered haircuts and mammograms, why should they start now? Postal banking is a thing. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system

Many other countries have public banks, and in Brazil one of the biggest public banks once implemented a project to provide banking through post offices. Later this service had been transfered to a private bank, but AFAIK it was ultimately discontinued.

2002.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system#Brazil

It was a savings only account where most of the money was just deposited in local banks anyway. It was limited to $500 in the day, about $13,000 in today's money, and the big draw (although it was unpopular at the time) was the money was insured. This was before FDIC insurance that all banks have now. Banks don't make a revenue stream on $13,000 savings accounts.
Why Sanders and AOC are pushing it, like anything else they would ultimately like the government to take over ALL banking and how else do you start but by running one bank in every town, the local Post Office. It's not about saving the Post Office it's about socialism.

Thanks I didn't know the details, I just want to be able to buy postal money orders. Maybe I should look into wire transfers from the credit union.

The quote from Permalink #11 says that they are disbursing VISA gift cards. Those aren't as fungible as cash.

Money orders can be purchased anywhere. Since I've never owned a checkbook, on the rare occasions a check is required, I'll do an online bill pay if given enough lead time for the check to be cut and mailed, or walk into a credit union and have them print one up.

I despise paying to spend my money, so I never do money orders. Online bill pay is free. I don't know why they call it bill pay though, as I never use it to pay bills, but simply transfer money in check form to someone else.

So, how 'bout them mail trucks? :)

Well I would say the build back better bill isn't going to pass now. Manchin was getting tough on the cost analysis and now with the loss in Virginia they have lost any momentum to make it happen. The will be lucky to get the infrastructure bill done now.

Hey Hersbird: what is the possibility the PO would make better money getting rid of junk mails losing bulk rates.

I ask because the wife is pre 65 & gets a mailbox full of medicare insurance crud everyday now. Almost gives my carrier a hernia.

Unsolicited mail should be charged double, which would cut down on a lot of the junk.

I get a letter every other day from my mortgage lender asking me to refi. Still don't know why companies haven't discovered email communication.

Pretty much because if you aren't in my list of contacts, your communication gets sent to the trash bin. After I have the deed of trust, communication ceases. I have no such filters on my mailbox, darn.

Well that situation is actually a big money maker. Even at say .20 a letter and they are probably more, 13 of them makes the same revenue as a 30 pound bag of cat foot from Amazon. But the costs are less on 13 letters to one house than one big package that has to be walked to the door. I guarantee the carrier has no problem with you mom but is pissed at the guy next door ordering 2 things from Amazon a week.

I will say political mail is a racket, they pay pennies and get treated better than Priority or Express. Charge those guys full $.58 each as they have more money than they know what to do with.

Maybe it’s because I’m in the burbs but I rarely get packages through the USPS. My Amazon packages are delivered by Amazon trucks 99% of the time.
But I can see how in more rural areas it’s less expensive for Amazon to pay the USPS rather than a driver. Bottom line, I believe, is the USPS needs to cut back on the discounts they offer Amazon/UPS/FedEx.

Political mail is a PITA, and nowadays it's mostly pointless at all.

How do you fit 300 packages in that tiny USPS truck? When I was driving for UPS I had a residential route with about 130 to 150 stops and 300 - 400 packages. My full size UPS truck would be filled including the center aisle.

Ups has bigger HEAVIER boxes, there are size limits for USPS

USPS size limit is 130 inches and 70 lbs.

UPS size limit is 165 inches and 150 lbs.

The vast majority of my packages were not large or heavy - easily within the UPS limits. An over 70 package was a rarity for me on a residential route.

I heard the last one of those little white postal vans rolled off the assembly line in the early 1990s.
If the post office needs tax payer money every 30 years or so for a new fleet vehicle then that's a great use of tax payer money, they make it last, everyone benefits, no special interest groups or identity politics.

Like I said, bigger and heavier. We hit the limits all the time at every warehouse I ever worked. At jobcorps, the Staples load was usually one full residential truck. Why they didn't use a trailer was beyond me.

Same warehouse, the mail package deliveries came in a post office truck