Forbes reports that the National Retail Federation (NRF) is teaming up with Amazon and other retailers “to create the Package Coalition, a lobbying group seeking to educate and give facts about the state of the USPS’s package business.” In essence, the organization has been formed to combat what the various entities involved believe is misinformation about the US Postal Service’s business model and economic challenges.
The announcement of the group’s formation, the story notes, “came ahead of a report expected to be released later this week from a task force President Trump created in an April executive order to study the money-losing U.S. Postal Service for possible reform. Trump has also publicly
attacked Amazon in many tweets, including calling the USPS Amazon’s ‘delivery boy’ and suggesting without any evidence that the special rate break that Amazon and other package shippers got led to the USPS’s loss.”
There are concerns that there could be “potential package rate hikes and reduced postal service at a time when so-called last-mile delivery is a high-stakes battleground for retailers meeting the demands of growing online shopping. Key to this is the USPS’s delivery service to all U.S. addresses, especially in rural markets, which even giants like Amazon rely on.”
USPS numbers, Forbes points out, indicate that “the shipping and package segment is indeed one big bright spot for the USPS: It’s the only segment that has seen increased revenue each year since at least fiscal 2014. By contrast, revenues from first-class mail, marketing mail and periodicals have declined over the same period, reflecting the less frequent sending of letters and cards in the age of emails and other electronic communication as well as a decline in the mailings of catalogues, print circulars and magazine subscriptions.”
To a great extent, experts say, the USPS’s financial problems stem from unique and unreasonable pension-related demands that have been placed on it by the US Congress.
The announcement of the group’s formation, the story notes, “came ahead of a report expected to be released later this week from a task force President Trump created in an April executive order to study the money-losing U.S. Postal Service for possible reform. Trump has also publicly
attacked Amazon in many tweets, including calling the USPS Amazon’s ‘delivery boy’ and suggesting without any evidence that the special rate break that Amazon and other package shippers got led to the USPS’s loss.”
There are concerns that there could be “potential package rate hikes and reduced postal service at a time when so-called last-mile delivery is a high-stakes battleground for retailers meeting the demands of growing online shopping. Key to this is the USPS’s delivery service to all U.S. addresses, especially in rural markets, which even giants like Amazon rely on.”
USPS numbers, Forbes points out, indicate that “the shipping and package segment is indeed one big bright spot for the USPS: It’s the only segment that has seen increased revenue each year since at least fiscal 2014. By contrast, revenues from first-class mail, marketing mail and periodicals have declined over the same period, reflecting the less frequent sending of letters and cards in the age of emails and other electronic communication as well as a decline in the mailings of catalogues, print circulars and magazine subscriptions.”
To a great extent, experts say, the USPS’s financial problems stem from unique and unreasonable pension-related demands that have been placed on it by the US Congress.
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