A Letter From A Former Letter Carrier

I'm a former rural letter carrier who proudly carried the mail for 10 years. Prior to that I spent 17 miserable years as a supervisor/dispatcher at United Parcel Service. I'm 56 years old now and my Postal job was the only one I ever loved. But I left the Post Office 6 years ago to work as a grunt in a local warehouse because I saw the writing on the wall.

In our local zip code area the Postal Service has 63 offices, UPS and Fed Ex one apiece. Saturday delivery needed to go. Every postal employee knows it, even if they won't admit it. But small town rural post offices are the real sink holes. The indirect subsidization of rural America through rural Post Offices will bring down the entire Postal system. The math is cold, but clear.

You can take the assinine rules Congress makes the Post Office play by away, but if these tiny, unprofitable black holes remain they will suck the Postal Service dry.

Small towns squeal like stuck pigs when their Post Offices are threatened and claim the offices are the last bit of glue holding them together. Offer each of them the option of keeping the offices open through subsidization of the Postal facility with local property taxes. See how many towns take you up on this offer.

The residents of these small towns will still have their mail delivered, but far cheaper and more efficiently by rural letter carriers. In fact many people in small towns that live along an existing rural route put up mail boxes and would rather have their mail delivered to their homes instead of trying to make it to the Post Office after work.

By all means get Congress, it's meddling, and in some cases out-right hostility out of the Postal Service's attempts to remain competitive, but do not think that these changes are not needed. Not if you really love and hope the Postal Service will continue to be a part of the fabric of America.