Tips for the USPS . . .

. . . On Money Saving, Health

Dear Mr. Postmaster General:

I thought you might like to hear from a poor guy who's getting poorer all the time, with a few suggestions your outfit might embrace as a means of starting a government-wide saving program.

Being a guy up in the Medicare bracket and in a state where I'm aching and paining a lot, having trouble walking and so on, I do have a few ideas
to save a few bucks.

I realize what I have to say will mean only a drop in the bucket, but listen anyway, please.

TRUCKS AND GASOLINE

A few years back your predecessor, think faster service in mail delivery, covinced everyone that using trucks or jeeps on mail routes would get carriers faster to destinations.

I don't think this has worked. Nowadays, trucks and jeeps cost a lot more money than they once did and that's costing taxpayers a lot of moola.

And that's not to mention the price of gasoline these days. I have seen mail carriers going from house to house, getting out of the trucks at each house, leaving the engine runnning, and then going only a few yeards to the next; stop and doing the same thing.

HEALTH

The truck method of delivering mail doesn't do much for the health of carriers either. Many of the carriers I have seen on my route are obese - fat- if you don't know the meaning of obese. In some cases the extra weight may not be the fault of using a truck instead of walking but instead a medical reason, so I don't paint all carriers with the same brush!

However, I feel that walking along the sidewalks and up homes would be a great benefit to carriers. Exercise would keep them in tip top shape and healthy. If they walked their routes they would make friends with the people they serve, even get cake or cookies along the route, a cup of coffee in the winter or soda in the summer and would know who gets what mail.

SAFETY

No mail carrier in a truck is immune from accidents and injury. Granted, they are trained drivers before being allowed to ride a mail truck, but it is the other driver that might hurt one of your employees.

Mail trucks are bulky boxes and hard for other drivers to see around or beyond, sometimes causing the other drivers to take chances that could hurt someone as they try to get ahead of a mail truck, or around a parked USPS truck.

MAINTENANCE

Those trucks have to be maintained continually to keep them operating properly and efficiently, and don't forget the maintenance costs for labor and parts. If trucks were to be eliminated there would then be a big savings in maintenance as well.

I suppose I could go on ranting about costs and methods of saving, but I guess my one voice wouldn't carry any weight, so I may as well quit now.

Thanks for reading this far. Maybe I've lit a little fire and maybe you might agree with me. If so, pass it all along and let's start saving the taxpayers some money, put the carriers on the streets to walk and make them healthier, thus saving them money by not having to see doctors and take expensive medicine. Medicine - that's for another blog coming soon!

JUST A BIT MORE - -

Cut out the WalMart type of selling in your postoffices, too. That costs money also, for merchandise, sales labor, equipment, signs, and so on.

Maybe some of my saving ideas would help bring down the cost of postage stamps, too, and then people might take up the use of pen and paper again and write more letters to their friends and relatives, who aren't hearing from them often enough these days. That would make you more money, while you save .

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