This morning our supervisor announced with "great sadness" that today would be our last day to deliver the weekly Dallas Morning News circulars. (For those not in the Dallas area, the DMN circulars are like ADVOS, but bigger and bulkier. They go out to every address that does not get home delivery of the Dallas Morning News, Dallas' only daily newspaper. As such, many routes have almost 100% full coverage ever Wednesday. See this blog for more information.) The supervisor tried to sound really sad when making the announcement. She noted that this was just another example about how the Internet is killing mail volume and that this was a major loss of revenue.

Were the carriers sad, you ask?

It's not that carriers want to see the USPS lose revenue, but most of the carriers were very pleased with the announcement for the following reasons.

1. The biggest reason is that carriers had to fight tooth and nail with management each week to get approved overtime to deliver the bulky, full-coverage mailings. Management would insist the circulars didn't take any extra time at all to deliver. In reality, it would take up to two extra hours per route to deliver the circulars. On straight park and loop residential routes, it could take as little as 15 minutes extra. But on apartment routes and routes in the ghetto that were designed for normally low volume, it could take from 30 minutes to 2 hours to deliver. Management wouldn't usually approve this full coverage time, and if they did it was after much arguing back and forth. As a result, when informed of the loss of the weekly circulars, the carriers stated: "Hey, management didn't count it anyway since it was a third bundle, so if it's not counted it's not a loss." Now, carriers are glad they'll have one less headache a week with the supervisors.

2. Some carriers bluntly stated that it was junk and the customers didn't want it anyway.

3. One carrier said the move would save a lot of trees.

4. Some carriers said this was an opportunity for management to cut overtime hours.

I write these reasons to make a couple of points. With volume falling, everyone at the USPS needs to be on the same page to craft solutions to falling volumes. As it is now, there is much hostility between craft and management that prevents different groups from having common goals and common concerns.

Another point is that in my experience there was about one person on my entire route of more than 600 stops that actually liked the DMN mailing. For many others, the circular incited hostility, many customers called the circulars junk. At the apartments, most went in the trash immediately after people checked their boxes. I say this because the USPS needs to transform and become more relevant. It won't be relevant if all people get are credit card solicitations and circulars that only piss people off. I don't see the loss of the DMN as a negative, but a chance to make the mail more relevant. I believe there is great opportunity for the USPS to facilitate important transactions through the mail, including fulfilling orders and other dealings from the Interent. The USPS has a complete nationwide infrastructure with a monopoly that gives it many advantages over the UPS, FedEx and others. If we can't take advantage of that, by offering competitive pricing and fast service for delivering important documents and bills, Internet orders, prescriptions, NetFlix, etc. then we don't deserve to survive. But to survive, we need to become nimble, not burdened by bulk mailings that get in the way of delivering relevant materials.

Here's a few thoughts about how the USPS can become more nimble and survive in the Internet Age:

1. 5-day, Monday-Friday mail delivery.
2. All-electric delivery vehicle fleet.
3. Once all-electric, convert remaining walking routes to mounted. It's the 21st century and walking door-to-door just won't cut it.
4. Consolidate sorting to only two bundles - DPS and FSS. USPS mandates that all mailings, including ValPaks and ADVOs, be machinable by either DPS or FSS.
5. With burdensome "junk" mailings out of the way, the USPS can maintain standard delivery times. (No working after dark two-days-a-week to deliver burdensome full-coverage third bundle circulars.) With standard delivery times, the USPS can win back business mailings, including Internet order fulfillment and documents now transported by UPS and FedEx. The USPS needs package and document delivery since paper costs will one day go the way of gasoline (world population expands while tree populations decline each year).