Abolish the Postal Service?

Here’s my tale of woe.

The front wheel fell off my electric bike. Luckily, this did not occur while I was riding it, but while I was transporting it on the back of my car. Back in September I arrived home after a nice ride on the Vilas County Trails without a front wheel. Today I assume it lies in the woods somewhere between Boulder Junction and Land O Lakes. Anyway, I was not going to find it. I ordered a new one.

That new wheel arrived a couple of weeks ago and here’s where the trouble started. The wheel was delivered not by UPS or FedEX but by the good old United States Postal Service. I didn’t actually get the wheel, though it must have been in my building long enough for the postal worker to fill out a form telling me they would hand it over when I handed them $114.53 for postage due.

Free delivery had been promised by the bicycle company. There must be some mistake. So, I got online and tapped in the long tracking number on the USPS form. Several times. Each time the computer told me it had no record of that number. So, I called the USPS customer service number. After a short wait a rep got on the line. He took the number and told me that the computer was right — there was no record of it. He was nice enough, but the only thing he could do to help me was to open some sort of case file for a lost item. He told me my local post office would contact me.

I waited ten days. My local post office did not contact me. So, I contacted the bicycle company. Their friendly rep gave me another tracking number and, sure enough, that one worked. Except this time the computer told me that the postal worker had attempted delivery but couldn’t access my security locked building and they would try again. This could not have been true since the postal form was placed inside my mailbox, which is (you guessed it) inside my security locked building. And since it was inside the mailbox it could only have been placed there by a postal worker. Also, no new attempt was made to deliver it or at least no second form was left for me.

The bicycle company told me that, sure enough, the postage was free and that I sure didn’t owe them $114.53. They suggested I wait until the package was returned to them, take my refund, and then reorder, but specify that it be delivered by anybody other than the USPS.

I could have just left it at that, but I had visions of the box hanging around the post office for months and by late March I’d like to have a front wheel for my bike as biking without one is extremely slow going. So, I put my head down, took an extra helping of fortitude and patience, and trudged off to the post office.

I encountered a line. I expected that as it was between Christmas and New Years. Fine. But a line at the post office is like what I imagine a line in the old USSR was like. There’s this feeling of resigned dread. Nobody is sure why they’re there. We all expect we will stand in this line for hours only to be told there’s nothing that can be done. Then Next! And we will shuffle off, head bowed, back to the dreary parking lot. On the drive home we’ll think about the futility and meaninglessness of life. This really is all there is, isn’t it? Endless lines. And then suddenly it’s Next! and we’re dead. What was the point of it all?

But it didn’t turn out quite that way. The line actually moved fairly briskly and, within about 20 minutes, I was there. I had time to evaluate my three postal worker choices, though of course it wasn’t my choice, but the universe’s choice of which worker had shed the previous customer first. (Three windows were closed and the thought crossed my mind that in what could be expected to be a busy period maybe you’d want to be fully staffed. I vowed not to bring this up when I got up to the window and I even tried to banish the thought from my mind, not wanting to offend the Postal Gods.)

Two of my possibilities looked friendly and maybe even helpful. But the third was a stern looking woman with a Russian accent (reenforcing my USSR analogy) and I said a brief prayer that it not be her.

Next! It was her. I stepped to the window. I managed a smile. I showed her the form and started to explain. She cut me off. “I have to find the package first,” she said, and disappeared. In a few minutes she was back with my box, just the size of a wheel. It was so close, I wanted to reach across the counter and snap it up and flee into the parking lot. But, probably sensing that very thing, she kept it well out of my reach and she pointed to it with disgust. “They sent it first class!” she said. “Something this big. First class! You can refuse delivery.”

I said I understood, though I did not understand. I mean this company ships stuff everyday all over the place. How could they get the postage wrong? This was not for me to understand. This was above my pay grade. I refused delivery.

On the drive home, in addition to contemplating the meaninglessness of life, I thought back to my sled. Earlier in December I ordered a sled from Amazon. Then I found a better sled at a lower price at the Ace Hardware store, so I went to UPS to return the sled. The line was short and the worker was friendly. She pointed out that I couldn’t just send the sled back unpackaged. She tried to find a box for me, but the only one she could find would have set me back $20. “You know, you really just have to wrap it. Anything will work.”

So, I went home and wrapped it in a couple of plastic garbage bags. I returned to the UPS store a few days later and she remembered me. “That works!” she said brightly. It cost me $13 to ship the sled back. Thirteen dollars. For a sled. Not $114.53 for a bicycle wheel. Note: the sled was bigger and heavier than the bicycle wheel.

Okay. So now that is the longest setup I have ever written to get to my point of the day, which is: Why the hell does the damn United States Postal Service even exist?

I know why it has existed. Almost all business was conducted through the mail and we needed a responsible authority to make sure it arrived. But now almost all business is conducted electronically and we have super efficient private businesses like UPS that do a great job at delivering packages. So, why do we need the post office?

Your answer may be that UPS does not deliver the mail. No, but they or another private entity could do that. England, Austria, the Netherlands and New Zealand have privatized their postal services. Works fine.

When I went online to hear the arguments, the first thing that pops up is a paper from something called The Economic Policy Institute. The EPI offered a handful of reasons to save the USPS.

It’s a “beloved American institution.” It is? I’m not loving it these days. I just want my bicycle wheel.

It provides “good middle class jobs.” What? And UPS and FedEX don’t? And anyway, no organization exists for the people who work there. It exists for its customers. It does a good job for its customers. They’re happy. The business prospers and the workers do better.

“It is a model of efficiency and responsive to changing customer needs.” Really? See above.

And if the USPS has any failings at all it’s because Amazon lobbies Congress to hobble it. Maybe so, but Amazon actually relies on the USPS to make deliveries in some rural areas that are difficult to serve. If anything, it seems to me that Amazon has an interest in a well-functioning post office.

My own view is that the USPS is a big, inefficient, calcified government bureaucracy that has long out-lived its usefulness. The private sector can, and does, do it better.

All I want is my bicycle wheel and a meaning for life. Is that too much to ask?