USPS takes new approaches to delivery

Pushing the limits

NPF

USPS News Link – 3/23/16 – USPS is taking new approaches to delivery to better serve business customers, postal executives said this week.

The organization is continuing to test new kinds of deliveries, such as groceries and bottled water. These tests have sparked significant operational changes, including adopting non-traditional delivery times and flexible carrier scheduling.

“We are evolving by pushing the limits of what we do now,” said Delivery Operations VP Ed Phelan. “We’re innovating in ways that seemed like a pipe dream just a few years ago.”

Phelan and Sales VP Cliff Rucker discussed the changes at the National Postal Forum, where they emphasized the Postal Service’s willingness use operational capabilities to better meet the needs of business customers.

“We’re committed to working with our customers to become an extension of their brand,” said Rucker.

One area where USPS sees potential: Delivering products for retailers that ship merchandise from stores instead of warehouses. The Postal Service’s ship-from-store business has grown more than 30 percent during the past year.

Phelan and Rucker said USPS also wants to continue leveraging recent investments in technology, such as Mobile Delivery Devices, which help provide businesses with up-to-the-minute tracking data they can pass along to their customers.

One Response to "USPS takes new approaches to delivery"

  1. Whatever. These guys wouldn’t know a customer if they stepped on one. They want to eliminate first class service by closing plants, and replacing the work force as it retires with half paid abused non-career workers in the same vein as a Wal-Mart or McDonald’s employee. These hapless individuals would not be full time career clerks, mail handlers or carriers until they got their own routes after one is vacated through retirement, removal or illness, which can take years.
    Plus, they are “removed” from the USPS for one week a year and “rehired” for another term, and that makes them vulnerable to very unfair abuses and no job security. Wherein lies the fallacy of management’s “commitment” to customers.
    Prior to the last round of contracts with the unions, for people in blue collar world, landing a job with the USPS was a plum job and had promise to be a real career that wouldn’t make them rich, but they would have the ability to save money for retirement, good benefits, a decent home and a car, and maybe be able to take a nice vacation with family from time to time. In return I felt that because I was getting good wages, I should do the best I could do because I was paid fairly to do so. Even as retirement beckons at years’ end I still try my best to get the right mail to the right customer and work hard.
    However, since most factories and a lot of other businesses pay better than what a CCA carrier can get, we get a workforce that doesn’t get the job security, has to work terribly long hours, and doesn’t get sick leave. While management might rub their greedy little paws at the labor savings, many new hires decide that the amount of work expected versus the pay plus abusive management just isn’t worth it and they leave. Turnover is a big problem now, and service from carriers who are physically and mentally exhausted and expected to do much more than career counterparts for half the pay is much worse. They aren’t trained how to handle forwarding or return mail. They are discouraged from taking the time to check change of addresses and just “deliver” it all and let the regular clean it up.
    My customers do not like that strategy. At all. I pick up more misdelivered mail, bring back mail that was supposed to be held for vacation or is a vacant address, etc. than ever. Most CCA’s who go regular are not doing any better because management has taught them not to care about anything but speed, and the rate of mistakes stays the same. They still literally run the routes, and when us old timers retire in a few years, they will take over the routes, do them in a third of the time, albeit very sloppily, and management will conduct route counts and adjustments nationwide and will be able to eliminate thousands of full time routes. That’s all they’re waiting for, to get a craft of half ass runners. Service will steadily go down, I promise you. If you’re still getting mail from an old timer like moi, and getting the right mail, be thankful because those days will be coming to an end before long.

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