US Postal Service Is America’s Worst-Run Organization

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 10, 6:50AM EDT

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US Postal Service Is America’s Worst-Run Organization — © tsz01 / iStock via Getty Images

The United States Postal Service (USPS) wants to raise the price of its First Class stamps again. If it gets approval, the cost of its “Forever” First Class stamp will hit $0.73, up from the current $0.68. It is the fourth increase in First Class prices since January 2023. The rise is because the USPS is poorly organized and run.

Regular price increases did not start early last year. Between 2010 and 2020, they increased seven times. It is another sign that the USPS is trying to offset management’s ability to get costs under control, and there are options to do so. The USPS said:

As changes in the mailing and shipping marketplace continue, these price adjustments are needed to achieve the financial stability sought by the organization’s Delivering for America 10-year plan. USPS prices remain among the most affordable in the world.

The 10-year plan is to increase efficiency and the speed of mail delivery. There is no meaningful evidence that either of these has happened.

In its most recently reported quarter, revenue was almost flat at $21.6 billion. The loss for the period was $2.1 billion, compared to a loss of $1.0 billion in the same quarter the year before. Management blamed inflation for part of the difference.

A close look at the USPS shows that it is bloated. It has over 515,000 employees and operates out of 31,132 post offices. Some of these are in towns with fewer than 3,000 residents.

The USPS insists on delivering mail six days a week. This is despite the nearly universal use of email for both letters and small packages (many PDFs). Enough people pay their bills online, so daily bill delivery is unnecessary.

The idea that there need to be over 30,000 locations, some of which are in small towns, does not make sense at all. While it may be convenient for customers, it comes at a massive cost. (See which are the poorest towns in the United States.)

Also, the USPS’s overnight mail system is unnecessary when UPS and FedEx can deliver packages to the same location.

The USPS should be much smaller. Instead, it increases prices to remain large and expensive for Americans to use.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.