

Rethinking The Postal System - frasierman
http://willsmidlein.com/blog/rethinking-the-postal-system/

======
dmschulman
The post office already offers a lot of the services you described:

"You could specify the to and return adress, you could pay with a credit card,
and you could add whatever options you want."

What would the point of obfuscating your address with a 16 digit ID number be?
You'd be adding another layer of complexity to an already simple system of
names and addresses on a designed letter carrier's route. If you want
obscurity you can always register a PO box.

Your solution also relies on other businesses easily and quickly adopting your
idea, which in reality is never quick and easy unfortunately.

Truth be told, the mail system isn't perfect, but USPS has done a lot in the
last 3-4 years to innovate their own business. I don't have to wait in line
anymore because I can print out postage and tape it to my package and leave
that at the post office.

Unfortunately a lot of post office customers don't seem to realize the online
system exists.

~~~
frasierman
I totally see where you're coming from, but since the system is mostly
automated (as far as I can tell), it'd be just as easy for them to grab from a
DB than to try and parse out an adress and postage.

I didn't really start mailing things until the last 3-4 years, so I must admit
that I don't know how the system worked previously.

While I agree that it wouldn't be immediately adopted, I don't think it would
require too much work on their end to make it work. It's probably naive, and I
don't fully understand the system now, so I may be totally wrong, but this was
just my idea.

~~~
egypturnash
Have you ever gotten things in the mail? Even junk mail?

If so, you may have noticed that your mail is ultimately delivered by a human.
Someone who has to be able to grab a handful of mail out of their bag and
perform a quick visual check that yes, everything in this bundle actually goes
to this address. Someone who might have a hundred bundles destined for an
apartment building, and would like to be able to quickly parse the addresses
to put them into the proper mailbox instead of having to type a long, cryptic
ID into a smartphone, and hope they continue to have connectivity.

Any proposed new addressing system also needs to deal with the fact that the
postal service serves EVERYONE. Even people way out in the middle of nowhere
who have no cellular service. The ONLY processing power available to those
mail carriers is their own brain, so it pretty much HAS to be human-readable.

All of the things you complain about in the address are USEFUL redundancy.
Including all of that stuff makes it more likely that mail will get to its
destination in the event of the ink being smeared (or running due to being
rained on). It's more data that's useful in error correction.

Also, if you are mailing out many things and hate copying the info manually,
let me introduce you to a concept called "printable address labels" and "mail
merge". I recently had to mail out about a hundred books after a successful
Kickstarter; I manually addressed maybe three of them. I put books in mailing
envelopes, put the labels on the envelopes, sealed them shut, and brought them
to the post office. They figured out how much it would cost me to mail them. I
paid with a credit card. It really wasn't a major hassle at all.

~~~
wildgift
This is true. Presently, I don't know my mail carrier, because I moved, but
where I grew up, we knew them. If someone mis-addressed a letter, the carrier
would deliver it to the right person. They could deliver using the family's
name, rather than the address. Back when people hand-addressed personal
letters, errors were common.

back in the day, back in the day...

------
rdl
IMO it would be pretty easy to change the USPS to be profitable or
sustainable, but politically difficult. Preserving universal service
(expensive rural routes and facilities) should be done via direct government
subsidy, vs. commercial cross subsidization.

Reducing or contractorizing staff (to cut medical and retirement costs) would
have been done already by a really private company, but would have political
and economic consequences given the size of USPS and government affiliation.
It is probably easier to cut facilities and routes, lower delivery frequency,
vs change employment terms.

The USPS is increasingly b2c and spam delivery service; used a lot less for
b2b and c2c, so reducing frequency to even twice a week would be fine.

~~~
wildgift
The first thing they need to do is reduce the pension funding requirement,
which was forced by a 2006 law. They have to fully fund the pension for 75
years, and do that in 10 years. That would reduce their operating budget
deficit.

Second, they need to push their parcel service, and open the counter all week
long. The internet has caused a reduction in regular first class postal mail,
but is also increasing the number of packages people send. Rising fuel costs
make sending packages locally a good option.

I like Saturday home delivery, but from a business perspective, it's not
critical. Parcels, however, I think are critical.

~~~
yummyfajitas
_The first thing they need to do is reduce the pension funding requirement,
which was forced by a 2006 law._

Yes, rather than fully funding their pensions like any private company, they
should be allowed to push massive problems into the future like the public
sector does.

~~~
rdl
Private companies don't really fully fund their pensions, but during the
period where pensions were common in private companies, those companies were
expanding in revenue and headcount, so it was ok. Was.

High-risk private enterprises don't do pensions now (can you imagine a Zynga
Pension Plan?). Approximately everyone has shifted to defined-contribution
from defined-benefit. The problem is USPS and the fully-private companies with
legacy pension plans are both in long-term decline and have underfunded
pensions, but USPS is particularly large in workforce and obvious in long-term
decline (and political).

~~~
yummyfajitas
Private companies are legally obligated to fund defined-benefit pensions.
There are some waivers given out, but it is generally required.

[http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00004:@@@L...](http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-
bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00004:@@@L&summ2=m&);

Though strangely, defined benefit non-pension plans (e.g., retiree health
care) are not required to funded. That's a loophole which should definitely be
closed.

You are correct that the private sector has abandoned pensions for defined-
contribution retirement plans, and with good reason. The public sector should
do the same.

~~~
quinnchr
"The PPA increases the funding target for single-employer deﬁned beneﬁt
pension plans from 90 percent to 100 percent of the plan’s present value of
all accrued beneﬁt liabilities"

Cool, now just make them fund the next 75 years of expected liability, instead
of just the current liability.

~~~
Danieru
They already do, that is what "present value of all accrued beneﬁt
liabilities" means.

------
wildgift
I think there's already a system where you pre-pay postage online, print a
barcoded label, and then drop it off. The label contains routing information.

There's no anonymity. Rather, there's redundancy because they print the
destination address. If you need to hide you address, you can buy a PO Box at
the post office or a private box seller.

I wish they'd innovate by having the post office retail windows open on
Sundays, rather than these current cutbacks. (The cutbacks are due to
overfunding their pensions, and that a 2006 law is forcing that.)

------
adestefan
Once again someone is trying to engineer a fix to a political problem.

------
glabifrons
They've raised the postal rates for first-class mail (that normal humans all
use) many, many times. Not a complaint, just an observation.

Why not raise the rates for junk-mail?

Sure, megacorps will scream and cry that it'll put them out of business, but
it won't. They'll continue sending out junk-mail as it draws in far more in
customers than they spend on it. If some don't, that much better for the
environment, since I'd guess >99% of junk-mail goes straight into the garbage
(with a small percentage of that being recycled).

Seeing as the vast majority of mail I've received over the decades has been
junk-mail, it should be an easy way to increase revenue.

------
jivatmanx
Why do they need giant, expensive buildings in the center of every town,
rather than partnering with convenience stores like in Europe?

~~~
wildgift
They already do this. There are postal counters that are contracted out. I
went to one in LA's Koreatown. It was croweded but OK, and was a little faster
than the perpetually understaffed USPS windows in Pico Union. (It's often 5+
people in line, and one clerk.)

They took their large sorting facility property, Terminal Annex, and leased it
to a server colocation company. It's at 900 Alameda, Los Angeles. Look it up.

They stil have PO Boxes and a counter there. I recently tried to drop off a
letter there on the weekend, but THERE WAS NO FREAKING MAILBOX. USPS needs to
stop eliminating mailboxes. There are even post offices without mailboxes
outside. Do they not want to make money?

------
rdouble
You can already do most of this. The bigger issue with the post office is even
if you do everything right (delivery confirmation , insurance) they still lose
your packages and have customer service a bit south of what's depicted in the
movie Brazil. The perception of the USPS as incompetent and surly is not
unwarranted.

------
bdunbar
I suspect the poster is neglecting the cost to switch over from the current
system of scanning packages to the new one.

Either you need to add the ability for reading a 16 digit code to the existing
system, or build a second, new, system to handle 'the new codes'. Either
solution ain't gonna be cheap.

~~~
russell
I think you can do that now. Pay by credit card and it prints out a label. The
current system converts the address into some sort of coded tracking
information, so I dont think the article is proposing anything that doesnt
exist in some form.

However, the website needs vast improvement. I once tried to find out how much
it would cost to send a package from my house in CA to Richmond, VA. It should
need only the package type, weight, and the two zip codes, but it took 10 or
15 minutes of filling out forms.

------
ericclemmons
You can get a bar code that pretty much handles the automation when you order
postage online.

What the author is missing is that somebody has to physically deliver the
package or letter, and that's why you need the destination printed on the
package.

Doing that with IDs alone is needlessly complex.

------
joshualastdon
That's smart! But if you get the number wrong, there might just be no way to
link the package to whoever was sending or tracking it. Well, then at least
the problem will be on the end of users other than what we currently have.

~~~
frasierman
Thanks!

Yeah, I'm not quite sure how to prevent human error without everyone having
barcode sticker printers, which seems extremely unlikely.

~~~
Kliment
Automated barcode sticker vending machines attached to parking meters?

------
mkadlec
It's not fair to think that everyone has an internet connection though, should
be posed as an alternate solution, then I think it makes a lot of sense.

------
orky56
USPS is an institution that provides a low margin business to the masses. The
majority of mail is not the glamorous packages that can demand shipping rates
in the $20-$50 range. It's the letter-sized envelopes and mailers that ensure
that a postman stops at every residential & business address on a daily basis.
That basic service the federal government guarantees ensures the USPS can't
bring itself out of this rut until this changes. One solution would be to spin
off the profitable portion to compete head-on and finance the low-margin side.

------
wereHamster
SilkRoad customers and merchants would _love_ this!

~~~
frasierman
Well, maybe... If the police were to work with the postal service, they could
find the originating post office.

Then again, they could more or less do this now, and they don't.

~~~
bdunbar
I'm pretty sure the postal police take a dim view of people using USPS to ship
illegal goods.

Or at least I've always assumed they do.

------
CleanedStar
"But the truth is, the USPS needs to innovate."

Tell your congressional representative, not USPS. FedEx and UPS have spent
large amounts of lobbying money ensuring that USPS does not innovate.
Congressional legislation is what prevents USPS from innovating.

~~~
bajsejohannes
> FedEx and UPS have spent large amounts of lobbying money ensuring that USPS
> does not innovate.

It's hardly surprising, but do you have any sources for this claim?

~~~
jwcooper
From the recent Esquire article[1]:

Over the past five years, FedEx and UPS have spent a combined $100 million
lobbying Congress. Because neither company has a delivery network nearly as
sprawling as Donahoe's, they contract with the postal service to deliver the
"final mile" of much of their cargo. For instance, more than 21 percent of all
FedEx deliveries are dropped off by a postal carrier. Meanwhile, millions of
postal-service letters hitch rides on FedEx flights every day, for which the
company gets paid $1 billion a year. FedEx and UPS don't want the postal
service to go out of business but to remain contained, out of the way — one
reason many of the addresses on packages that pass through Medford are
handwritten by mothers and grandfathers and eBay minimoguls, rather than
printed by manufacturers and retailers.

[1] [http://www.esquire.com/print-this/post-office-business-
troub...](http://www.esquire.com/print-this/post-office-business-
trouble-0213?page=all)

