Opinion: Postal Service needs to make tough decisions to cut its losses

Editorial – April 17, 2015 The U.S. Postal Service’s woes have been mostly out of the spotlight for a while, but they haven’t gone away. The agency’s most recent financial statement shows it is $15 billion in debt and still losing money. It lost $5.5 billion in 2014. Apologists for the service often point to…

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Door-to-door uptown mail delivery returns in Lake Placid

(July 13, 2014) LAKE PLACID — Traditional mail delivery has returned to businesses along East Interlake Boulevard and North Main Avenue in Lake Placid. Controversial mail distribution centers — commonly called “cluster boxes” — were removed Friday. One of the multiple sets of cluster boxes was on the front porch of the Highlands County Health…

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Postal service tries to ditch door delivery, letter carriers fight back

By Jamie Partridge May 23, 2014 Despite telling local KATU news that it’s “just an idea.. we’re not really pushing for it…it’s just a discussion… they’re just talking… about in Congress” (http://www.katu.com/news/local/Mail-delivery-to-your-front-door-may-go-away–260417771.html?tab=video&c=y), the Portland District of the US Postal Service is indeed soliciting property owners and managers to “convert” from at-the-door to at-the-corner “cluster box”…

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Package delivery could be casualty of postal woes

Door-to-door deliveries for packages could become a thing of the past as the U.S. Postal Service looks for ways to cut costs — even as officials concede they don’t know if the cost etimates they are using are reliable. USPS estimated that it costs roughly $380 annually per delivery point to deliver a package to…

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GAO – USPS: Delivery Mode Conversions Could Yield Large Savings, but More Current Data Needed

United States Government Accountability Office Report to the Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, House of Representatives What GAO Found The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) estimates of delivery mode costs and potential savings from converting to less costly modes show that door-to-door delivery is much more costly than delivery to a curbside or centralized…

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