THINK FOR A MOMENT what your life would be like if there were no universal mail delivery system.
Think of what it would mean to your business. Imagine what you’d have to do to connect with your customers, and what you’d have to go through to find new ones. Picture how hard it would be to conduct business with people who live outside the area where your business is located.
OK, maybe that’s too much of a stretch. Then consider for a moment the impact inconsistent, unreliable and overly priced mail service would have on your firm and on those you do business with. Ask yourself how perfect a substitute the phone, TV, radio or even the Internet would be if the taken-for-granted power and reach of a hard-copy message (and package) delivery infrastructure were to tank.
If you’ve never thought about such things, you might want to start today.
Unless you’ve given up breathing for the past six months, you know the U.S. Postal Service is in the throes of a fiscal crisis. In other words, despite its ability to sell some $65 billion of goods and services each year, the USPS is finding it hard to live within its means. And rather than tightening its belt, it wants to reach into your pocket for another wad of your hard-earned cash. Oh sure, you might think about telling it to get lost. But then you’d have to figure out how to live without it.
Postal leaders have been warning of a coming crisis for well over six years. The thought of this, however, must have seemed too painful for many to take those calls for vigilance to heart.
But here we are. The USPS is hurting. Postal officials are threatening to cut service already hampered by problems with quality and cost efficiency.
So if you haven’t yet planned how to grow your business, maybe you’d better do it now. Of course, you could get off your duff and let your congressional reps and the White House know about how important a universal postal system is to your company. The USPS is still an agency of the federal government, and you’ve elected these people to go to Washington to do your bidding. It’s time you told them to start earning their bucks.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
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