Postal Rate Commission Chairman Edward Gleiman has urged the U.S. Postal Service to consider overhauling its lightweight parcel post service or merging it with its priority mail service.
There was no immediate comment from top postal officials on the PRC chairman’s suggestion since most of them are in Chicago at the semi-annual National Postal Forum.
Speaking before the Association of Priority Mail Users (APMU), Gleiman, noting the slight differences between lightweight parcel post and priority mail rates, said “the postal service’s lower weight single piece parcel business seems to cry out for some reform.”
Eliminating lightweight parcel post in favor of priority mail or some other more general realignment the parcel area might be a solution worth considering,” he said pointing to that service’s growth in less than 30 years to nearly 1.3 billion pieces last year from 185 million pieces since its introduction in the late 1970’s.
Many direct marketers, especially catalogers, use priority mail to ship lightweight customer orders, generally consisting of one or two pieces of clothing, that weigh less than five pounds.
Gleiman attributed priority mail’s growth to competitive pricing, guaranteed two-to-three day delivery and more recently to an advertising campaign which reportedly will intensify over the next year. He urged the USPS to carefully measure its return on investment so that postal advertising in general, and priority mail advertising in particular, is on a sound businesslike footing.
Gleiman also suggested postal officials consider “the desirability of a [postage] discount for priority mail used to dropship publications, Standard A [advertising mail] or other mail pieces.”
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