Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Zipper
Granted, email killed the postcard and letter, but package mailing is higher than ever given online selling. You'd think the post office would be doing well... especially given the low fuel costs over the past few years.  |
You can do a google search for total revenue for usps to find the numbers. They did a total $70 billion in revenue last year. Each year they average between $65 - $74 billion. So, what happens with a government agency or any large corporation is when revenue goes up they find a way to spend it and they budget a little more for next year. So when revenue goes from $74b to $65b - and they budgeted $76b - they fall short. I’m sure we all wish we had those problems. But the postal service does have a lot of payroll, a lot of pensions and a lot of fuel to pay every day. The average postmaster salary is $74k and almost every town in the US has one.
That being said, when I started mailing cards on eBay in 1998-99 it would cost 49 cents to mail a card in a bubble mailer. Now it’s close to $3. About 4 years ago I could ship a framed photo from NY to CA for under $15. Today it’s $70. So the package cost has risen at an insane rate and their revenue has stayed mainly even so they must be losing a lot on stamped mail.
As it stands, they are still the best deal out there. For small packages under a pound no one else can compete. And unless you are a big seller and negotiate a better price on volume with ups or fedex they are still the best on packages over a pound also.
Buyers have to understand that it costs money to ship things and those costs are going up and they are going to have to pay a little more. And it sucks for all of us as both buyers and sellers.