How High Can UPS Count?

By Roland Hughes - December 22, 2011 | Tickers: FDX, UPS | 0 Comments

• Email
• Print

Well, according to this video, one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCwx_UBj2KI

At this point I shouldn’t need to include the link of the FedEx (NYSE: FDX) driver throwing a computer monitor over a fence. Even if you never visit YouTube, that video has been on every news show around the world. You knew it was only a matter of time once the FedEx driver video surfaced until one or more of a UPS (NYSE: UPS) driver was going to go viral.

I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to point out that the United States Post Office, you know, that thing Benjamin Franklin tried to establish with the Pony Express, has flat rate boxes and ships packages up to 70 pounds. Only the Post Office is required to ship all of that mail those sorry excuses in Washington DC send out free of charge, and, right now, it really needs your money. Besides, it has been a really long time since we heard about Postal workers burning junk mail under a viaduct or overpass.

Have you ever lived in a place that had Post Office lobby hours on Sunday? I have. Let me tell you, that is the real definition of Fahrvergnügen. I don’t mean just on tax day, I mean every weekend through the year. Speaking as an author, publisher, and a consultant who has never really trusted the “outbound mail cubby hole” at client sites, few things are better than living near a Post Office which has six lobby hours on Saturday and is open noon to four on Sunday, especially when they are smart enough to tell most of the passport photo people to come back on Sunday rather than tie a teller up on a crowded Saturday.

Maybe you hate the Post Office because all it brings you are bills and junk mail. Well, you can blame Congress for the junk mail. That’s right! Congress and lobbyist bribes created an advertising mail rate which lets a junk mailer ship a pound for less than a regular U.S. citizen pays to send an ounce. They “justified” this rate by saying “the truck was already going that direction so it might as well be full.” They also calculated this rate when diesel fuel was below $1.50/gallon and you can bet that rate is held sacred by those in Washington controlling the Post Office rates. Here’s a quote from another blog:

Search on "Pound Prices" Periodicals "Advertising Portion" in Google.com, dig it out, it's there. Again, **you** pay for an ounce, they pay less for a pound.

Btw, just how much money would UPS and FedEx be making if Congress controlled their rates and they had to carry junk mail below cost and Congress’ mail for free?

Postal officials say a major reason for the postal service’s financial crisis — it has lost $20 billion over the last four years — is a 2006 law requiring the post office to pay an average of $5.5 billion a year for 10 years to underwrite 75 years of health coverage for future retirees. The post office hopes to use much of $50 billion in claimed pension overpayments to cover those annual health care payments.

You know what? I don’t see Congress dipping into their own pockets for their own health care. I defy anyone to find anyone in Congress reaching into their own pocket when yours is right there to be picked...unless of course they are trying to stop the wads of $100 bills lobbyists keep stuffing there from falling out.

Here’s what I want from the Post Office. Pretty much everyone I talk with wants the same thing and we don’t care if you have to use every penny Speaker John Boehner pork barreled for the engine nobody wants to fund the “new” Post Office.

http://www.f135engine.com/alternate-engine/thirdparty-comments.shtml

• lobby hours on both Saturday and Sunday

• on busy Saturdays passport customers must wait until Sunday

• elimination of the junk mail rates

• companies like DVD by mail rentals and book retailers must negotiate rates directly with PostOffice, not Congress

• Priority Mail means 3 days or less, you figure out the routing

• Post Office be allowed to issue corporate stock so it could create a Postal Freight division using trucks and trailers parked at mail order companies so it can compete head to head with UPS and FedEx

• Most of all, we want every person working in the government, elected or not, to refuse all shipments which don’t come via the Post Office but could have. In addition, we don’t want to see any public official using any service other than the Post Office when what they are shipping meets all of the postal shipping rules.

The truth is, it won’t cost any money to save the Post Office if the people who should be using it actually would and if we get rid of the abuses it has suffered at the hands of lobbyists.

• Email
• Print
• Feedback