Is Sunday Delivery Really Worth It?
By Peter Piteira
Orlando, FL, Branch 321 President
Every Sunday, the Postal Service delivers packages for Walmart and Amazon. Although that may be a great service we provide for the American people, I believe it’s a losing proposition for the Postal Service.
Customers are delighted to get these packages on Sunday. The problem is Amazon and Walmart get the credit for such a fast and efficient service, while we at the Postal Service get the headaches.
It doesn’t make sense to go out of our way to deliver our competitors’ packages while delaying USPS Priority and Ground Advantage packages. If we must deliver packages on Sunday, doesn’t it make sense to deliver our products first?
The Postal Service worries about retaining city carrier assistants (CCAs). However, it dismisses the notion that one of the biggest complaints from CCAs is having to work on Sundays.
Not only do CCAs have to work on Sundays, they have to be at work at 10 a.m.; it ruins their whole day. Of course, the same applies to the EAS supervisors—some who have over 30 years working for the Postal Service—forced to work on Sundays.
The Postal Service expects us to be as efficient as UPS and FedEx. However, they forget one, simple thing: We do not have the equipment, facilities or vehicles suitable for processing and delivering packages—UPS does. (Trust me on this, I worked for UPS before I joined the Postal Service.)
UPS has employees whose only responsibility is to load the vehicles for the drivers. On the other hand, we expect CCAs to load their vehicles, then go deliver the parcels. All UPS, FedEx and Amazon do every day is deliver parcels. Our CCAs deliver parcels one day a week.
As a result, our CCAs have a hard time being as efficient as our competitors. And when CCAs get to know their areas and have enough experience to be almost as efficient as our competitors, they become career employees and stop working Sundays.
The other challenge the USPS has with Sunday delivery is we don’t have a good forecast of the number of parcels we will have on any given Sunday. So, we either understaff or overstaff.
I propose the next time we negotiate contracts with Amazon and Walmart to deliver their parcels on Sunday, they need to give us a good, solid parcel forecast for the next Sunday. If they are off by 1% either under or over, they either pay us a surcharge or we have the right to deliver the parcels later in the week.
The Postal Service may argue that Sunday delivery is worth it from an economic standpoint—despite it being bad for morale, the USPS being less efficient than our competitors and all the other Sunday challenges we face. Maybe the decision makers are right; I don’t know because the agency doesn’t break down the costs and revenues of Sunday delivery.
I suspect Sunday delivery only benefits our competitors and their customers, while imposing a heavy burden on the Postal Service. But, then again, what do I know?
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