How about every second day mail delivery?

Denny

When you look at truck fleets, the postal service stands out. I think the U.S.P.S. alone has over half a million light duty trucks for mail delivery. If the routes were reworked so each home got mail each second day, that would shave fuel use. Maybe hundreds of millions of dollars savings each year.

I used to work as a post office supervisor in Toronto and we had over 1500 small delivery trucks there alone, and most of our 3,000 area letter carriers used their own cars on top of that.

I used to look forward the checking the mail each day, but now it doesn't seem very important as I can get email correspondence, even bills come that way.

It wouldn't bother me if my mail came every second day. The post office can easily design routes so typical (not home based) businesses could get mail daily from arterial delivery and homes every second.

How about you? Would it bother you in any way?

captain_ignorant · Coal Joined: Oct 06, 2006 Posts: 5

How about a modified delivery system?
I used to live in a town where the mail was delivered to the local post office daily and everyone from the town and the surrounding farms had to go and collect from there. You chose how often to go and get it. The further people had to travel to the office the less often they collected.

kokoda · Heavy Crude Joined: Aug 24, 2006 Posts: 422

All I get are bills ... I couldn't care less if they never delivered them.

pedalling_faster · Intermediate Crude Joined: Dec 10, 2005 Posts: 847

we didn't have mail delivery last Wednesday, the 9th.
the route involves 12 miles of walking and is not popular.
we survived !

i went to the annex where all the mail is sorted to
get a new mailbox key yesterday, the 11th. while
i was waiting, being that this was the first time i had
"seen the inside" of one of these places, i just watched
them work.

looks like a tough job. every mail person stands at a
2 or 3 sided station with a few hundred cubby-holes,
just sorting and sorting. i asked the person who was
helping me if these were the same people who deliver.
Yep.

i like the idea of paying mail-people by the piece of
mail. give them 4 cents or 5 cents for every piece of
letter size mail sorted. sort 4000 pieces of mail,
make a decent wage.

yes, even if sending a letter costs 45 cents.

if you pay a bill for $100, who cares if the stamp
costs 41 cents or 45 cents ?

the alternate-day mail delivery is a good idea.
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SpringCreekFarm · Intermediate Crude Joined: Mar 03, 2006 Posts: 890

There is a huge volume of advertising in today's mail that makes up what a mail carrier delivers.

With that kind of volume, delivery every other day would overburden the mail carriers. I know this because my family has been doing it for about 60 years in this area and I've helped deliver mail. It's a big job to get all that mail out every day across the country.

I suppose Canada Post could cut out delivering advertising but then that would take away a large part of the revenue required to subsidize the ridicoulously low cost of sending mail.

As much as people complain about the cost of courier service, it is very inexpensive if you consider how much it would be to drive the package there yourself.

There is also the part about the mail people only working every other day. That is no way to make a living and people likely would not do it.

The mail person would be expected to deliver ALL the mail every other day for half the wage? Have you considered this and would anyone do this? I wouldn't.

I see our local mail service becoming VERY important as we pass into this next stage of harder times. I think we should look at it to see what inefficiencies we can eliminate but I don't think we should gut it.

If we want to seriously cut fuel consumption and make our transportation more efficient, then we have to get more product on to rail cars and move more of it at once. What it would mean for the consumer is that we sacrifice some convenience for efficiency's sake. There would be a drastic reduction in JIT ( just in time ) delivery.

Trouble is, no matter where you make the changes, it upsets someones livelihood and that is always a bummer.

Denny

TheDude

USPS has a page on reducing their Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 698

How about just completely ending all home mail delivery and just pick it up yourself. Here in rural Alberta we pick it up when ever we make it to town ourselves. Not even a rural mailbox. End the waste end the home personal delivery of mail.

dinopello

I'm fine with less frequent delivery. Many routes here are done on foot though. The dogs would probably miss the daily mail slot activity

deMolay · Intermediate Crude Joined: Sep 04, 2005 Posts: 698

How about no mail delivery, pick it up yourself, and fire all the letter carriers and give us all who don't get mail delivery a tax break.

Chesire · Heavy Crude Joined: Jul 13, 2007 Posts: 267

Yeah right , if the canatard postal system is anything like the mericatard postal system. Getting even an iota of change past the unions will be impossible. No change is happening until its forced by loss of govmint revenues. Fortunately that 25 % property value decrease and the subsequent lower echelon Fedstapo agents getting thrown under the bus. Along with increasing food and fuel prices should force downsizing on agencies. Will be fun to watch the dominoes topple , along with squealing of the pigs and the bleating of the sheep . Once they are told no more taxpayer filled troughs for you parasites to slurp out of.

Blacksmith · Last edited by Blacksmith on Sun Feb 17, 2008 4:26 am; edited 1 time in total

I live in rural Alberta and we have to go either to a local lock box or into town to get our mail. The lock box gets letters and small packages while our Post Box in town has my busness mail and large packages.

I hesitate to advocate the same system for the whole country because of the large number of people employed by the postal service.
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Keith_McClary

I live in a town of 2000 people.

We don't have a letter carrier walking door-to-door to deliver our mail.

So we all have to drive our pickup trucks to the post office every day.

MD

oneplain1 · Tar Sands Joined: Nov 18, 2007 Posts: 54

how about cluster boxes placed every 1/4 to 1/2 mile apart?