Recent Posts

By Douglas Carlson Editor’s note: The Postal Service’s plan to reduce service standards is now being reviewed by the Postal Regulatory Commission for an Advisory Opinion. The Postal Service presented five witnesses to make its case. Last week, four witnesses submitted rebuttal testimony. Below is the rebuttal testimony of long-time postal advocate Douglas Carlson, the registrar and assistant vice chancellor ... Read More

Steve Hutkins The Postal Service ended Airmail as a separate class of U.S. mail on May 1, 1977, almost sixty years after it had been established. By 1974 the Postal Service was using airplanes to transport nearly 30 percent of First Class mail— over 15 billion pieces — and there wasn’t much difference between the two classes except that Airmail ... Read More

Steve Hutkins In August 1970, Title 39, aka the Postal Reorganization Act, created the Postal Service. The first section, 39 U.S. Code § 101, is entitled “Postal Policy.” It’s just over 400 words long, but it is probably the most frequently quoted passage in the history of postal legislation. It’s often cited in litigation, academic articles, and the dockets of ... Read More

The administrator and founder of the “Save the Post Office” website, Steve Hutkins, joins Bob Levi on NAPS Chat to discuss the website’s purpose and impact. Bob and Steve also talk about the Postal Service’s on-time performance problems and the plan to downgrade service standards, now being reviewed by the PRC for an Advisory Opinion.  Listen on GooglePodcast, Spotify, and ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins The Postal Service has requested an Advisory Opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission concerning its plan to relax service standards on First Class mail and Periodicals. Much of the mail that is now expected to be delivered in 2 days would shift to a 3-day standard, and a lot of 3-day mail would change to a 4 ... Read More

The Postal Service has requested an Advisory Opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission concerning its plan to relax service standards on First Class mail and Periodicals. We started a new website page that provides easy access to the PRC’s docket (N2021-1), as well as some charts, tables, and blog posts about the proposal. You can find the page here; it’s ... Read More

The Spring 2021 Newsletter from Communities and Postal Workers United (CPWU) has articles about Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s ten-year plan, ironically named “Delivering for America”; the “People’s Postal Agenda” discussed at the online conference put on by the Grand Alliance to Save the Public Postal Service; Charlotte postal workers protesting mistreatment and harassment; and Washington state’s postal workers pushing to ... Read More

The mailers were probably disappointed that the Postal Service’s new 10-year plan released yesterday, “Delivering for America,” did not reveal how big of a rate increase the Postal Service intends to make using the new authority it was granted by the Postal Regulatory Commission. While they wait in suspense, here’s a guess: 3.6 percent. We already know that the calculations ... Read More

March 18th marks the day fifty-one years ago when postal workers walked off the job in New York City in what soon became the largest wildcat strike in U.S. labor history. Last March we posted this article by postal historian Phil Rubio, author of Undelivered: From the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service. The ... Read More

With all the attention to delivery delays over the past several months and the Postmaster General’s plans to relax delivery standards — as well as calls for more transparency about postal operations — this seems like a good time to launch a Service Performance Dashboard. The Postal Service itself publishes a useful service performance dashboard, but it shows only quarterly ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins The House Committee on Oversight and Reform has just posted a discussion draft of postal reform legislation in advance of Wednesday’s hearing with Postmaster General DeJoy and the Chairman of the Board of Governors, Ron Bloom. The draft has three main sections — one about creating a Postal Service health benefits program that includes Medicare, one on ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins Earlier this week a group of mailers’ associations continued their effort to convince the DC Circuit Court to stop the Postal Service from increasing rates under the new authority it was recently granted by the Postal Regulatory Commission. The Postmaster General has told the mailers that another rate increase, based on the new authority, is “imminent.” The ... Read More

By Steve Hutkins The Postal Regulatory Commission’s annual compliance review ordinarily focuses on postal rates, but this year, due to widespread reports of mail delays over the past several months, the Commission has been scrutinizing on-time service performance. Over the past few weeks, the Commission and its newly appointed Chairman have filed a number of information requests seeking data from ... Read More

The CPWU Winter 2021 Newsletter has articles about why Postmaster General DeJoy should be dumped, the possible implications of the Senate going Democrat, and the contrast between DeJoy’s vision and what a public vision of the Postal Service looks like. Read the newsletter here ... Read More