USPS is hemorrhaging billions a year and it might sell off the rights to your mailbox to turn a profit

pulse

December 5, 2018 4:17 PM

The United States Postal Service lost $3.9 billion in FY2018. But the government agency has one advantage over FedEx, UPS, and its other competitors.

USPS lost $3.9 billion in FY2018.

USPS
a new report
franchising the mailbox" — charging private companies to allow deliveries to individuals' mailboxes.

You may have never thought of it, but there's only one shipping company that can leave deliveries in your mailbox, rather than just on your doorstep — the United States Postal Service.

And the USPS is famously not doing so well. It's doing so badly, in fact, that President Donald Trump personally urged the federal agency to up delivery prices on gargantuan e-tailer Amazon.

The USPS lost $3.9 billion in FY2018, according to a Dec. 4 report from the Task Force on the United States Postal System. Its cumulative losses are now nearing $70 billion. As the report notes, "the shift toward digital correspondence and the corresponding effect of declining mail volumes has led to significant net losses."

Meanwhile, other package delivery companies are cleaning up in the e-commerce era. FedEx reported strong earnings last quarter, and UPS upped its quarterly profit in 2018 Q3 by 20%.

Still, the USPS has one key advantage over those private delivery companies — access to your mailbox. And the USPS Task Force wrote in its 70-page report on the flailing federal agency should "franchise" your mailbox to delivery companies in order to recoup losses.

"This could be done by retaining the mailbox monopoly and allowing regulated access, for a fee, to certified private companies," notes the report. "These 'franchisees' would be granted access to the mailbox for the delivery of mail and small parcels."

The task force, headed by Secretary of Treasury Steven T. Mnuchin, also recommended in the report that the USPS develops a concept for what its key customers are (particularly rural households), expand third-party relations, spin off its package delivery business, and other measures.

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