Word: postal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep your mail carrier from making the daily rounds, promises the U.S. Postal Service's unofficial motto - but the economy might. With 9.5 billion fewer letters and packages delivered in the 2008 fiscal year compared with 2007, the biggest mail volume decline in history has contributed to the agency's $2.8 billion loss for the year. That partly explains why shipping prices will rise 5% this month (a bigger hike than all shipping increases in 2008), with a stamp price jump to follow in May. The decline could also...
...Mail deliveries, like hemlines, always drop in economic downturns. But the current pinch is worse than usual. One reason: the housing and financial sectors were once gold-star postal customers, but since their cash flows have slowed to a trickle, their direct-mail marketing campaigns have all but dried up. Mortgage direct mailings declined 57% from the first quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008, according to the Chicago-based mail and advertising tracker Mintel Comperemedia. And credit card offers by mail sagged 28% from the third quarter of 2007 to the third quarter of 2008, dropping...
...Postal Service had already been limping along, taking heat on several fronts. One of its biggest threats is e-mail, which has made the art of letter-writing seem downright quaint and last year contributed to a nearly 10% drop in first-class mail (that's individual letters to you and me), the worst loss in any mail category. Demand for deliveries has been further beaten down by environmentalists, who consider snail mail a waste of paper. Meanwhile, spikes in oil prices in 2008 drove operating costs for the Postal Service's fleet - which is 220,000 vehicles strong - through...
...Although the Postal Service is a government agency, it lost taxpayer funding in 1982, which means that it now has to operate within the black like any private company. Even before last year's financial loss was announced, the Postal Service - knowing that bad tidings were on the way - had scrambled to find $2 billion in savings. In 2008 the agency cut 50 million work hours and phased out many of its 23,000 automated stamp vending machines, which have become expensive to repair and update. Clearly, the savings weren't enough. And 2009 doesn't look much better...
...unwanted mail with a prepaid return envelope (so long as it is not from a charity), I stuff that envelope as full as I can with junk from a different source and put it back in the mail. This does not relieve the real problem, but it gives the postal service much-needed business. Steve Block, Dunnellon, Florida