Trenchwork

The US Postal Service has done it again. They lose their minds at regular intervals, and now seems to be that time again.

Some time ago, they changed air mail to overseas locations (without telling their customers, incidentally, and while continuing to charge air mail rates). Packages were shipped air mail to Europe. From there, they were handed over to a land-based subcontractor who removed them from the European postal systems and sent them on to their location via surface transportation. Once there, they were either handed over to the local postal service, or contracted out to services like DHL (which, by the way, I’m far from fond of). Instead of using 7-10 days, package mail took the usual surface mail time, or 6-10 weeks. However, the system was fraught with problems, and contractors kept quitting. After a while, the USPS realized their system wasn’t working and that they had fast run out of contractors who would put up with the hassle, customer complaints, and never-ending paperwork and inefficiency inherent in the system. So, they went back to normal. Air mail packages sent from the U.S. now remain within the postal system and are handed over to the receiving country’s postal system as usual.

Historically there has been air mail and ground transport, and a couple of smaller options such as book bags. Air mail of a package normally takes a week to ten days. Ground, or surface mail, usually took a bit less three months, but was considerably cheaper. It was a snap to ship something which didn’t need to be there in a hurry, and the price was downright reasonable. Now, however, the USPS has decided to do away with surface mail. Mail going overseas from stateside has to go air or book bag. The book bag (just a mail bag) can carry other things than books, but is still much more expensive than surface mail.

This isn’t funny. It seems to me that if the intent was to cut costs, they’d have cut air mail for personal mail over five pounds, or some such idea. Surface mail is a mass-transport mail at the cheapest possible rate. They fill a boat. Lots and lots of containers on a cargo ship.

The new ruling should reduce mail to overseas considerably; people just won’t be able to afford to send their packages by air mail. Buyers overseas won’t be able to purchase cheaper stateside products and pay the exorbitant shipping.  Going FedEx or UPS isn’t exactly a cheaper option, although at least they successfully track their packages; USPS tracking stops at the US border, even though you pay for the service.

The only good news in all this is that almost all the fiber I’d have shipped came back with me.

It strikes me that the USPS is shooting itself in its own foot. Surely less traffic at higher costs will mean a reduction in their own budget and resources? And they’re talking about stopping home delivery–which I think is even less intelligent. What will the postal service become when it stops providing a postal service?

I have to be honest and say that I’ve not seen any good come of privatizing the USPS. I can’t remember whether it was done under the current administration (whose brother was equally foolish about privatizing the State of Florida’s Personnel System with currently disastrous results), or the previous administration’s efforts to balance the budget. At the moment, however, I find myself wanting to seriously thwap the culprit for sheer stupidity.

I half suspect they’ll realize–as they did with the pseudo-airmail chaos–that they’ve made yet another mistake and revert to the status quo, or that the government will realize it’s made yet another mistake and will resume control.

In the meantime, however, it’s seriously seriously annoying.