I hear there will be new surcharges from October 3rd to about the end of December. If anyone finds out what the surcharges will be, please post any info/link.

https://www.stamps.com/usps/postage-rate-increase/
Not yet approved.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/nationa ... season.htm

Temporary?

I heard about this a couple of days ago. This is the way the PO wishes us a Merry Christmas with a temporary price increase for the holiday season Oct. through December. I asked my daughter to give me her wish list now due to the increase and she said "WHAT". Of course the increase will effect all of our shippers including Amazon. I sure hope that it does not get approved because it doesn't seem fair to charge more just because they have more business.

Get the mailman off their feet.
I still see them walking house to house in neighborhoods that can quite easily have mail boxes by the road like the rest of us.

It's kind of like the "between a rock and a hard place" thing. I will stipulate at the outset that I am no fan of government at all. That said, the change in public buying habits has resulted in an enormous uptick in online shopping, especially at Christmas. The Post Office already has an association with UPS to move packages around because of the postal system's inadequate infrastructure (planes, etc) to handle it all. More business only increases the operational money loss already incurred.

The quandry; hire a lot more permanent postal workers within an inadequate system and have them kind of unbusy outside of the Christmas bulge? Or become allied with UPS, DHL, FexEx or similar? I don't know the answer but I can understand the "temporary" increase. The one problem is that with government, temporary often becomes permanent. As has been said, the closest thing to eternal life is a government program. Once created, they tend to become permanent.

P. O. was removed from the government nipple in 1971. Services fund operating costs. Unfortunately for them, government still maintains controls.

They've been particularly shackled by the mandate to prefund health benefits for retirees. This amounts to billions a year. This stash will outlive all retirees. Cut the cord, remove the prefund mandate and let the the company operate like a business.

bjbebs wrote: ↑Sun Aug 15, 2021 3:07 pm P. O. was removed from the government nipple in 1971. Services fund operating costs. Unfortunately for them, government still maintains controls.

They've been particularly shackled by the mandate to prefund health benefits for retirees. This amounts to billions a year. This stash will outlive all retirees. Cut the cord, remove the prefund mandate and let the the company operate like a business.

I agree, but I'd go one step further. Let UPS, FedEx, and DHL move first class mail. Then USPS will really get the chance to operate like a business. Innovate or go bye bye.

This is from Brookings too:

"The fundamental problem is that while the USPS generates enough revenue to cover its operating costs, its pension and retiree health care liabilities push its bottom line into the red. The USPS has operated at a loss since 2007. From 2008 to 2018, it reported $69 billion in losses."


https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front ... nd-funded/

UPS, FedEx, and DHL aren't going to deliver unprofitable routes. They charge a heck of a lot more for comparable first class mail. How much do you want to spend to just send a letter? Five bucks or more for a letter to Timbuktu?

Obviously USPS isn’t charging enough since they’re losing billions. Stamps may be dirt cheap but it doesn’t really seem sustainable. Open it up to all comers, it could be that USPS does it the best, that wouldn’t surprise me a bit. I’ll pay what it costs, my money would be on Amazon coming up with something better and slightly more expensive.

From what little I've read, and talking to a few letter carriers, the problem appears to be that they are pre-funding health care to include workers that they have yet to hire, including ones who have yet to be born. That's where the billions in losses come from. I don't know where those billions go to.

Still, mailing a letter to Hawaii, whether it's .55 or .58, is more cost effective than delivering it myself.

FYI, this morning I sent in my MMMM seeds in a 9x13 padded envelope and the postage was $5.65 for First Class. That rate for that size envelope is good up to 13 ounces. My envelope weighed 11 ounces.

If I could fit in a 9 by 13 padded envelope I'd post myself to hawaii.

Not quite a 9" X 13", but...