if I never read it I'm not being hit with anything but a forest turned into trash for nothing. Only a Union could bring on such a situation. I really love the "we have the intellectual high ground" Democrats, they give me a good laugh when I think about what Unions do. If I get junk mail that has a prepaid mailback envelope I always tear up some unrelated junk mail and put it in the envelope. I make sure my name and address is on part of it. They always get the message and remove me from all mailing lists but I still get the junk mail that is sent blindly to all mailboxes..
You need to consider the entire universe of package shipping. Those rates only apply to their supplied boxes. How much market share do you think those little boxes get? I'd guess that less than 15% of all packages are shipped in the little flat rate boxes. Let's look at another common package description. 24" cube 40 lbs Approx 1500 miles Drop-off at location Residential delivery USPS --- $67 --- expected delivery 5-10 days FedEx --- $50 --- delivery 2-3 days UPS --- $54 --- delivery 2-3 days For smaller boxes it would appear that USPS is competitive until you compare apples to apples. To get equivalent service and transit time you'd have to select "priority mail" to compete with Fedex Home Delivery and UPS Ground. This almost doubles the price from $22 to $40, where both FedEx and UPS come in at about $28. You can forget about the USPS for any freight shipment. And these are just rates for people off the street. We get even better rates through our UPS and FedEx accounts. In the end, for about 80-90% of all shipments, the US Postal Service is slower and/or more expensive.
The Post Office shortfall is running at about $9 Billion per annum. That deficit has to be made up for by Congress. The competing private sector entities have to turn a profit and pay taxes that subsidize their competition, the USPS, and they are still competitive in many areas. That is a pretty good real-world comparison of Public Sector effectiveness compared to Private Sector effectiveness. Quite often Public Sector activities are not held to the same environmental standards as Private Sector ones. I knew a very active environut. He would raise hell about everything that anybody did with regard to building housing but said nothing when Los Angeles County moved a small mountain of earth a few hundred yards and built a huge building. I called him out on that and he just gave me his Psychopath grin...
Tools, electronics, etc... Winding down now. Too busy with asset management and wife is working less.
OK, one of my companies would spend a lot on shipping as well. The 40 pound range was standard, the U.S. was 75% of our market. I thought I remembered that 40 pounds was a 'limit' of sorts that could cause a much higher shipping price if we went over. This was a while back of course. Easier to take it public and sell it, lol. c
Yes, unless you are talking "freight". Then I believe it is about 200lbs or over 8' length before higher charges. But the point stands either way. USPS is a worse option for anything but envelopes and the little flat rate boxes. Even then if you have a business account then UPS and FedEx get pretty competitive on price and will pick up at your location. Then add to it that when talking freight shipments, there are any number of regional trucking outfits that give even better pricing. It gets really hard to argue that USPS is worth keeping around.
Aren't FedEx 'routes' sort of a franchise thing with no guarantee from the main company? I see people bidding on routes and all that. Not sure about UPS, do you know anything about that? c