Postal Service – a Dinosaur

I was directed to an article recently in Bloomberg Business week, “The U.S. Postal Service Nears Collapse”. My initial reaction was, this is no surprise. Please tell me you’re not surprised either!

The article provides all the information and then some on the issues impacting postal services in general. It’s a great read if you have minutes.

Surprising to me was the number of people employed in the United States, 571,566 full time workers which make USPS the second largest employer (civilians), and they have 31,871 offices, more than retail stores than Wal-Mart, Starbucks and McDonalds combined (that’s a lot of space). If it were a private company the Post Office would be number 29 on the Fortune 500 List.  Revenues were over $67 billion and yet it is still losing money. This trend will continue.

Everything changes and postal service is no different. We’ve seen a massive shift in the way we communicate. Today, you or your business is likely to get your invoices and statements electronically. Not only that, you pay your bills online, no cheques, no pens, no envelopes, no cheque registers, no stamps and certainly no mail carrier; a thing of the past, a virtual dinosaur.

Now I know a number of folks will point out to me that we have the rural areas, we have the elderly, and even some areas of government have not caught up to the current changes in communication. However, the tide has turned, and business is in the process of eliminating paper communication and therefore the postal service, as we know it, will be extinct.

My biggest concern is always trying to find the displaced workers new fields to work in, because these jobs, like the automotive industry, the printing industry, the lumber industry and the transportation industry are NOT coming back.

Why worry when we can get all our information almost for free, email marketing and soon, social media. Maybe you’ll get your mail on Facebook?

Michael Bickerton, Raven5 Ltd, Toronto, June 2, 2011

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