A few days ago I was chatting with a neighbor and suggested that the Post Office was pretty likely to abandon home delivery of mail in favor of clusterbox delivery, delivery of mail to individual boxes at the ends of blocks. As it turns out my thought wasn’t just a figment of my imagination:
First, it was doing away with Saturday delivery. Now, door-to-door service could be coming to an end.
In an effort designed to cut costs at the cash-strapped agency by up to $4.5 billion a year, Congressman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., is proposing the U.S Postal Service phase out door-to-door delivery and shift service curbside and to neighborhood cluster boxes.
The proposal — due for vote by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday — would affect about 37 million residences and businesses.
The Postal Service spends about $30 billion annually on mail delivery, losing $15.9 billion last year alone. It does not receive federal assistance, getting revenue from postage sales, delivery services and other products. But mail service has dropped nearly 25% from 215 billion pieces delivered in 2006 to a current volume of 160 billion, says Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan.
The Postmaster General’s office estimates labor-intensive door-to-door delivery costs an average $353 a year. Curbside delivery averages $224; cluster boxes, just $160. The Postal Service, currently making 54 million curbside deliveries and 40 million to cluster boxes and central locations, has been moving toward collective deliveries at shopping malls, business parks and newer residential developments.
I think a better first step would be a sharp increase in the charges for third-class mail. But mail delivery to a mailbox attached to your home could become a thing of the past.
Great! I’d be happy to get together with some undocumented workers to pick up our mail at a cluster box and deliver it to our door. The only thing better would be for the USPS to cancel mail delivery altogether, then we’d send our worker to a central station, effectively privatizing mail delivery, which should have been done aeons ago.