Postal Service hopes new routes will save money

by Carol Crump
Wednesday, July 29, 2009 9:28 AM MDT

You may have noticed that your mail now comes at a different time, brought by a different carrier.

The route changes that started in Casper on July 18 are part of a bigger plan.

“We have to be self-sustaining, with no bailout and no tax money,” said Al DeSarro, United States Postal Service spokesperson for Colorado and Wyoming.

The recent “squaring up” of routes in Casper was done to better utilize staff and time. As Casper grew, it was common to add little bits onto routes to accommodate new addresses.

After a while, the routes started crisscrossing, according to Casper Postmaster Mark Lambert. The new routes will make delivery more efficient and economical.

The same kinds of readjustment to routes, for the second time this year, are happening in up to 3,000 city letter carrier routes in Wyoming and Colorado.

The shifts are just one of the ways the USPS will continue to avoid layoffs and maintain mail service, DeSarro said.

The Casper post office has been hiring only temporary workers since before Lambert became the postmaster last December.

“The Post Office has never had a layoff,” Lambert said.

Nationwide, early retirements and normal attrition eliminated 30,000 USPS positions last year.

Steps like route readjustments already have saved the USPS $6 billion, a necessary saving at a time when national mail volume is down 15 percent from last year.

The Post Office also has streamlined its national delivery system network and restructured district offices by eliminating positions and offering reassignments to personnel. The USPS also is looking at paring customer service hours in some locations or even consolidating post offices in larger metropolitan areas than Casper.

Five-day delivery may be on the horizon, a change that 66 percent of the respondents favored in a recent Gallup poll. In the same poll, 75 percent responded that it was “very important” that the Post Office stay in business.

“We have to look at doing these things,” DeSarro said.

The economic downturn is driving the need to make adjustments to a postal service that became a self-sustaining government agency in 1971. The USPS, which receives no tax support, is facing a $6.5 billion or more operating budget deficit this year.

Ninety-five percent of the mail volume is business-oriented, and the advertising and bulk mail that are a large part of business mail have fallen off.

First class mail, which is the USPS’s largest revenue producer, has dropped 7 percent in the last five years. Online bill payment, direct deposit and electronic communication all have contributed to the downturn in first class mail.

The USPS also is facing the same Congressional mandate to create a prepaid health benefit pool for retirees as other governmental entities like states, cities and counties. Putting millions into the pool last year resulted in a deficit at year end rather than a break-even outcome.

According to DeSarro, the USPS is hoping to convince Congress to allow the payments to the $7 billion pool to be stretched out over a period of years.

There are bright spots for the USPS. An extensive advertising campaign about shipping packages through the Post Office Web site and priority mail flat rate boxes are a “tremendous success,” especially with home-based businesses and small retailers, DeSarro said.

Revenue is up 25 percent since the ad campaign began and overall shipping is up 2 or 3 percent.

The USPS is still the largest postal system in the world, with mail rates that are second to the bottom. The Postal Service is the federal agency ranked highest for keeping information safe and secure by 87 percent of 7,000 Americans surveyed in each of the last five years surveyed by the Ponemon Institute.

“The economy is going to turn and direct mail and bulk mail will come back,” DeSarro said. “Mail is a communication business.”

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