Postal Letter

Lets try it again: Would Fed Ex and UPS raise their rates if the USPS halted all service?

The demand is the same and the supply of needed service is less. JP, it takes decades to expand a companies infrastructure to match the USPS. Keith, what you said is completely against the law of supply and demand. Patches, thank you for not answering the question.

Public Comments

1. What makes you think that existing suppliers wouldn't just expand to meet that demand?
2. Anytime I have anything of importance to send, I already use Fed Ex or UPS. I couldn't tell you the last time I used the USPS.
3. repubs love the free market....even when it brought us the financial meltdown. well, until dhs could expand, they will raise their rates. and who knows if dhs would expand. that's why they call it a free market, it is unpredictable. or fed ex and ups could keep prices low until dhs goes out of business. or one of them could just buy dhs. there is not too much competition between health insurance companies for some reason either.
4. Until the people found that UPS Ground is much more expensive than Fedex Ground, many of them would switch to UPS. Presently, Fedex Ground is much lower priced than USPS Priority Mail. Fedex would probably lower their rates to ensure they attracted more of those customers.
5. I would love to see those two slug it out for all of those customers, not to mention new entrants into the marketplace. The thought of the massive, wasteful, inefficient bureaucracy called the USPS disappearing makes me smile. I would live to see a fire lit under the asses of those surly, lazy union creeps at the USPS by announcing it will be privatized and will have to survive on its own merits instead of being a protectorate of the government. And before you say that the USPS already survives on its own, do some research and see how many things like property taxes, auto license fees, etc. it doesn't have to pay by law. The answer to the question is I don't know, nobody does. Suffice to say that if free markets are allowed to function, pricing will be controlled as if prices get too high, new market entrants will appear. Pretty simple, huh?
6. They would have to because delivering every day to every address in the US would bankrupt them if they tried. The reason that the USPS is losing money is junk mail, unsolicited bulk mail makes up a huge proportion of their business but they undercharge ridiculously for it. Their theory is that if they charged more they would lose business, which is rubbish because they are the only service with the infrastructure to deliver to everyone and even if, say, fedex won a contract they would still have to use USPS for final delivery if they didn't they would have to become the USPS. We would all miss junk mail - wouldn't we?