The Pony Express & Lost Fed-Ex/ UPS Packages With Mail Houses Due To USPS Regulations

How you receive your mail may not be at the top of your list of things to think about when you are considering when buying a new home.

If you are a senior citizen, handicapped or simply don’t feel like walking (or driving) several  blocks away every day to fetch your mail, however, it is something that you might want to move up the list. 

Especially now with the proliferation of online sales met with Pony Express delivery problems from Fed-Ex and UPS.

Don‘t blame our association,  the SLLA, they have “no dog in the fight.“   Put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the USPS.  Yes that same “company“ that if it was a private enterprise, would have filed bankruptcy decades ago.

It‘s not so much as a mail delivery problem but with the rise of the internet, and the persistent COVID problem online sales have exploded.   I have lost a package or two even though I‘ve listed both addresses on the order.

Go to North South Community FB page and see a multitude of complaints arising out of everyone‘s frustration with our antiquated two address system.

Fedex and UPS all charge a fee to deliver packages but that fee is not “postage“ only the USPS collects postage. In 1934, Congress enacted a law prohibiting anyone from putting their hands in mailboxes besides USPS and the customer who receives the mail.

They passed this law to clamp down on people not paying for postage and delivering letters themselves, and it‘s still in effect to this day.

We could solve our massive problem here in Seven Lakes.  Name both of the addresses with the digits so 120 Pinecone is the same.  Not xxxx 7 Lakes, N for USPS.  Also a recent White House task force said that USPS should explore franchising the mailbox as a means of generating revenue.

The Postal Service could use the cash.

It‘s been losing money for years, including a $3.9 billion loss in fiscal 2018. It‘s no surprise. People are mailing fewer letters first-class volume dropped by 2.1 billion pieces last year. To help offset that drop, USPS raised stamp prices by 5 cents in January its largest increase ever.

And the Postal Service is still struggling to pay $5.5 billion each year in future retiree benefits.

Transportation analysts have said giving mailbox access to companies like UPS and FedEx would allow them to serve their customers faster — simply by shaving off the time it takes for a courier to walk to someone‘s doorstep, particularly in rural areas.

Mark Dimondstein, whose union represents more than 200,000 USPS workers and retirees, says customers might begin to choose private carriers to deliver small parcels instead of the Postal Service, thinking their services have become faster.

Under pressure to cut costs wherever possible, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has been requiring builders and developers to purchase and install kiosks holding a cluster of individual mail boxes.

But builders usually have been able to stop local postal officials from switching to them in communities where the single-family homes are detached, according to Claire Worshtil, senior program manager for land use at the National Association of Home Builders.

By delivering mail to kiosks, instead of door-to-door or even individual street-side mailboxes, the postal service is saving money on gasoline and wear-and-tear on USPS vehicles. And because letter carriers can deliver to more mailboxes when they are clustered or fewer carriers are needed to deliver the same amount of mail  it’s saving money on salaries, too.

According to the USPS, at roughly $30 billion annually, delivering mail is the largest single fixed-cost the service incurs. Put another way, door-to-door delivery costs about $353 a year per address, while curbside delivery runs $224. Cluster boxes cut the cost to $160 per address annually.

.In North Carolina, according to Tim Minton, director of government affairs for the North Carolina Home Builders Association, the USPS failed to notify both builders and the local building authorities that it was no longer going to deliver to individual houses. Moreover, it wouldn’t grant a waiver to subdivisions that were already approved but weren’t started until the housing downturn had turned upward.

Consequently, some projects that were cleared three or four years ago found out mid-stream that cluster boxes were required. In many cases, says Minton, there wasn’t any place to put them. And in other instances, mail is delivered in half of the subdivision and developers have to put in cluster boxes for the homes in the other half.

If you move, the post office will find you and they‘ll get you your letters and they‘ll get you your package. And FedEx and UPS won‘t do that,“ says Cassey Francis, a hairdresser from Iowa. She grew up the daughter of two letter carriers.