New USPS Report Indicates Focus on Digital Platforms

New USPS Report Indicates Focus on Digital Platforms

A new report from the Office of the Inspector General outlines a few priorities for the Postal Service supply chain over the next 10 years.

First, going into the pandemic, it's clear the Postal Service had serious plan to deal with the rise in small parcel volume and the continuing decline in mail volume. COVID made this trend much worse. And then employee availability due to pandemic, etc., didn't help either.

Second, they are setting a goal of 95% on-time reliability. If you hired a normal carrier and got this outcome, you would fire them pretty quickly. So I think they need to do better here.

Third, the plan includes $40B in capital investments over the next 10 years. This is about the level that UPS is investing now, for example. And UPS doesn't need to deliver mail to every address in America. Amazon spends this much on logistics in about 1-2 years (depending on the year).

I just can't get around the fact that to me, USPS should be using Amazon as a provider, rather than the other way around ... We have kind of crossed that chasm.

While it's in the constitution that the USPS needs to deliver the mail, does it mean that it can't outsource literally anything? Why not subcontract some routes to UPS, FedEx or Amazon the same way these other companies do?

Still not seeing a way to arrest the share loss of USPS in the short, medium or long-term.