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How a 1909 Law Is Holding Back the Post Office

Matt Cantor — Sat, 05 May 2012 09:42:08 CDT

The Senate has an idea to help save the Postal Service: Let people mail alcohol. After all, FedEx and UPS carry the stuff all the time. But a law from 1909—established 10 years before Prohibition came into effect—bars the Postal Service from shipping "all spirituous, vinous, malted, fermented,...

Post Office Closing 223 Processing Centers

Rob Quinn — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 03:58:00 CST

The US Postal Service is closing or consolidating almost half of its mail processing centers nationwide as part of a $15 billion cost-cutting plan. Some 223 centers will go, in a move that puts 35,000 jobs at risk and will slow down first-class delivery, AP reports. The agency, which...

Stamps Might Hit 50 Cents

John Johnson — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 18:58:51 CST

50-cent stamps, anyone? That's one of the changes the postmaster-general wants Congress to act on quickly if the service is to survive, reports the Wall Street Journal . That increase of a nickel for a first-class stamp is actually one of the minor proposals from Patrick Donahoe. He also laid out...

USPS Has Dismal Holiday, Loses $3.3B in Quarter

Kevin Spak — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 11:29:37 CST

The US Postal Service had a jaw-droppingly ugly holiday quarter, losing $3.3 billion despite a better-than-expected surge in gift shipments, the agency announced today. That's $3 billion worse than its figure for the same period in 2010, the AP reports, and at this rate the agency expects to run...

Post Office to Slow Mail, Kill Next-Day Letter Delivery

Kevin Spak — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:51:31 CST

Get ready to wait an extra day for the next DVD of The Wire: The mail is going to slow down. As part of its plan to save $3 billion, the cash-challenged US Postal Service will be closing roughly half of its 500 mail processing centers as soon as next...

Stamps Going Up a Penny

John Johnson — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 15:33:15 CDT

Given the dire financial straits of the Postal Service, this shouldn't be a huge surprise: The price of a stamp is going up a penny to 45 cents in January, reports the Washington Post . The first hike in more than two years is expected to pull in an extra $888...

Capitol Hill Buried in Avalanche of Angry Mail

Kate Schwartz — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:41:05 CDT

Could the USPS' last great hope be angry Americans? An avalanche of letters and emails are pouring into Congress, with offices reporting that they're dealing with, in one case, as much as 1,422% more constituent-penned correspondence than they did in 2002. Politico reports that House offices are seeing an...

USPS Teeters on Brink of Default

Mark Russell — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 05:34:00 CDT

With a $5.5 billion payment due Sept. 30, the US Postal Service's longstanding financial woes are about to come to a head—in fact, if Congress doesn't do something soon, the agency might have to shut down entirely this winter, reports the New York Times . The USPS handles about...

How to Save the Post Office Big Bucks? Slower Mail

Mark Russell — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 08:21:05 CDT

Postal service may be enshrined in the US Constitution, but the clause doesn't say anything about how fast that service needs to be. Now, with revenues plummeting, US Postal Service officials are thinking about slowing delivery speeds for first-class and Priority Mail, a move that a new study says would...