MONDAY MADNESS descended on the Postal Service this week. A staggering 280 million pieces of mail flooded local post offices on "M Day," the year's busiest, as Americans sent out holiday cards and presents as though in unison.
This is crunch time for the Postal Service, which hires 40,000 temporary workers to handle the 20 billion pieces sent between Thanksgiving and year's end.
The agency's daily volume soars about 50 percent, with Dec. 13's volume reaching nearly three times a normal postal day's pace.
It has been a good year for the quasi-independent agency that continues to deliver the mail to every household in America.
Sure, there was a price increase in January, but it was relatively small and had been put off for six months. That postponement saved customers $1 billion.
The agency has more good news: No new rate increase for another year. Cost cutting and success with computerized mail sorting have given the agency an unexpected financial boost.
But with 825,000 full-time employees, 35,000 postal facilities and 200,000 vehicles, the Postal Service is never going to be a consistent money maker. That means occasional rate increases.
Even after a string of profitable years, the agency has an accumulated deficit of $3.5 billion. The Postal Service needs a far more efficient and market-driven operation to stabilize its rates.
Officials have made progress in becoming more business-like. A top-heavy headquarters bureaucracy was trimmed this year by 400. More advanced computers, which can read more than half of all handwritten addresses on envelopes, have allowed the agency to close 15 manual encoding centers.
Electronic commerce via the Internet remains a threat. But the Postal Service is becoming a top delivery choice of Web site merchants. Amazon.com, for instance, made the Postal Service its primary delivery carrier.
If the Postal Service exploits its Internet delivery role, it may find new ways to lower costs, increase revenue and stave off rate increases. That's cheering news for everyone this holiday season.
