Dead Weight In The USPS

This piece first appeared in February 5th, 2009 edition of the Pioneer Tribune, a weekly newspaper from Manistique, Michigan. Please visit their website: http://www.pioneertribune.com/

Imagine, for a moment, that you are the owner of a very, very large company that lost nearly $3 billion in 2008. Now imagine that your company is expected to lose $6 billion more in 2009. I would imagine that you would do everything in your power to turn that sinking ship around, or else you would abandon ship.

The truth is that you are the owner of that very large money-losing enterprise.

The United States Postal Service announced last week that it lost $2.8 billion last year and expects to lose nearly $6 billion in the year ahead.

The USPS has suggested that it could cut its delivery days from six to five to help save on labor costs. The USPS blames the loss on low mail volume, so it would make sense that service six days per week isn’t really needed. Besides, many if not most of the time-sensitive mail items are already being handled by outside sources (FedEx, UPS).

I have heard some talk of the USPS cutting Tuesday delivery, since Tuesday is the day with the lowest volume of mail. Using that logic, a Tuesday cut makes sense, but when you look at the bigger picture, I’m not so sure.

In this day and age many, if not most, of us are using other forms of communication for our personal contacts. E-mail, text messaging and the telephone have us all so well connected that there is barely a need for “snail mail” in our personal lives.

Business, on the other hand, relies on the USPS to a greater degree (although that need is waning), and since most businesses operate Monday through Friday, it would seem like curtailing Saturday deliveries would be a more logical solution.

An idea that could possibly save even more money than eliminating a day of delivery would be the closing of many post offices.

Now before all of the postal employees start screaming at me about their jobs, please hear me out.

Right here in the Upper Peninsula there are many unnecessary post offices, the very best example of which exists in Menominee County.

The small villages of Powers and Spalding lie right next to each other. It is hard to tell where one starts and the other ends. They are so small that, when traveling through them, it is hard to believe that you went through one town, let alone two. There are less than 1,000 people in Powers and Spalding combined, yet Powers and Spalding each have their own post office. These offices are located within a half a mile of each other.

I don’t mean to single out these two offices, but they are perhaps the most obvious examples in the Upper Peninsula.

Many counties have several post offices in relatively close proximity. I don’t know what rules dictate the location of these offices, but they certainly aren’t placed according to population.

The Upper Peninsula’s largest and most populous county is Marquette County. It has a population of 64,634 (2000 census), and it has 13 post offices. That translates into a ratio of one post office for every 4,971.8 people.

The county with the smallest population is Keweenaw County. It has a population of 2,301 (2000 census) and three post offices, or one post office for every 767 people.

There is something wrong with that picture.

You might argue that post office placement is dictated by geography and how far people would need to travel to get to the post office. If you look at those numbers, that argument doesn’t hold water either.
Houghton County contains 1,012 square miles of land, and it has a total of 17 post offices. That’s one post office for every 59.5 square miles.

Luce County, by contrast, contains 903 square miles and has but two post offices, a 451.5 to 1 ratio.

Luce County may not be the best example to use, because a very large portion of the county is public land that is uninhabited. A better example would be, once again, Marquette County with it’s 13 post offices and 1,821 square miles of real estate, or one post office for every 140 square miles.

The Braver Institute has compiled a map of all of the post office locations in the Upper Peninsula.

View Larger Map

After looking at this map and looking over the numbers, it becomes quite clear that every county in the Upper Peninsula could stand to close a post office … or five. I am sure that things look much the same way everywhere in the country.

I’m not talking about getting rid of any staff, although that may be necessary even if no offices are closed. I’m only suggesting closing offices and combining them into more centralized locations.

I would like to hear a logical argument for keeping these offices open, and by logical I mean that the argument would have more substance than “I’d have to drive farther if they shut down the post office at Pine Stump Junction.” (There isn’t one there, thankfully; it was just an example.)

I do realize that some of these offices are located within the walls of another business, but I would find it hard to believe that the space provided for these offices comes at no expense to the Postal Service.

I think that Congress should take a look at where the cuts could be made. It doesn’t take a committee full of eggheads to see where services could be condensed into fewer offices. I would gladly offer my time to help with the process.

We shouldn’t leave it up to the USPS to decide which offices get cut, either. That’s like saying, “Which of you people want to lose your job?” None of them would raise their hands, but they would be happy to suggest who should be on the chopping block.

The U.S. Postal Service does a great job of moving an awful lot of mail every day, but if it continues to lose money at this rate, I’m not sure that it is worth the effort.