Small package market changes could benefit buyers
'Longtime market leader UPS has seen some of its market share taken away by growing rivals FedEx, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and DHL.'
Purchasing
Debate Over Postal Rates Moves To Senate Commerce?
Aviation Week suggests that the airline industry 'is lobbying to take [the Collins postal reform bill] before the Senate Commerce Committee, which is likely to be more sympathetic to the plight airlines would face should the bill make it into law.'
Aviation Daily (subscription)
USPS Releases February Financial Results.
Net income for the month was $12.2 million. Revenue was up 0.1% compared to February 2004, while expenses were up 2.7%. First class mail volume declined 2.4% compared to SPLY, while Standard increased 4.1%. There was slightly more Standard Mail in the system (at $0.19 a piece revenue) than First Class (at $0.37 a piece).
USPS web site
click here for the Excel version of the report
Illinois man pleads guilty to money order fraud
A man has pleaded guilty to purchasing more than 200 money orders, each with a face value of $1 or $2, at post offices in St. Louis and Southern Illinois, and altering them to read '$900.'
Alton (IL) Telegraph
Hamilton P&D set to reopen
'The post office here is set to reopen Monday, 3 1/2 years after it handled anthrax-laced letters sent to Tom Brokaw, two U.S. senators and the offices of the New York Post in attacks that further heightened the nation's insecurity in the weeks after 9/11.'
Associated Press
USPS Employee Statitistics Update
As of February, USPS career workforce stands at 690,301, down 14,280 from the prior year. The biggest reductions were in clerks- 10,042; mailhandlers- 1,267; supervisors- 1,117; and Area/HQ- 886. City carriers dropped by 64, while rural carriers were the only group to increase, up by 999.
Postal Rate Commission
Deputy PMG Nolan to Retire
Deputy PMG John M. Nolan has informed the Board of Governors that he will retire in May. Nolan returned to the USPS in 2000 following eleven years with Merrill Lynch. Prior to joining Merrill, Nolan was General Manager/Postmaster of the former New York Division. He began his Post Office career in 1970.
Forecasting Mail Volumes
'This is one of several background papers that are being prepared as part of the Pitney Bowes research for the manuscript, 'Electronic Substitution for Mail: Models and Results; Myth and Reality'. A final manuscript will be published by Pitney Bowes in 2005.'
Pitney Bowes Postinsight.com
The Problem of Speaking Two Dialects of the Same Language
Abstract: The Postal Service and policy makers find themselves confounded by the confusion resulting from the use of two dialects of the same language based on a perpetuation of a PRC fiction that single-piece and presort First-Class Mail are both a part of one subclass, rather than two distinctively different subclasses. The matter can be resolved simply by instructing the USPS to provide its ratemaking data based on CRAs generated for every separately scheduled rate, and by giving the USPS sole authority to define what is and what isn't a subclass.
Postcom's Gene Del Polito
Two new officers named
Postmaster General Jack Potter yesterday announced the appointment of two new officers. Lynn Malcolm is Vice President, Finance, Controller. Susan Plonkey is Vice President, Service and Market Development.
Link Online
FedEx fights disclosure of postal contract data
Traffic World reports 'In a letter that had been kept confidential, FedEx wrote to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics (BTS) that releasing revenue and volume information about its lucrative postal contract would bring the carrier and the USPS "commercial harm" and would delay mail delivery.'
Traffic World posted a copy of the letter on its web site after it was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from the magazine. The BTS had requested volume and revenue information on FedEx's mail carrying operation about a year ago, according to Traffic World. 'Competitors, including the airlines that have lost huge volumes of mail under a USPS management of its delivery network, want those details as they seek ways to win back mail traffic.'
The article also quotes attorney David P. Hendel, a critic of the contract, as saying 'I think the Postal Service is embarrassed about how much they are paying. They've really clamped down on any information about it. They treat it as a big success. But it actually is a very expensive proposition for them.'
The magazine identifies Hendel as 'a former USPS attorney', who later represented Emery Worldwide in its unsuccessful challenge of the FedEx contract. It also reports that the FedEx contract is the largest of any postal supplier, at $1.1 billion last fiscal year.
