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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

being a buyer off ebay what always surprised me is the next to nothing if not free shipping from China. It is good to see it changing as an article from 2014 [1] indicated how the USPS is getting soaked for the shipping on our side of the ocean.

if this is fallout from the trade issues it honestly is the only good outcome of them

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/storyline/wp/2014/09/12/...

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Note that the program described there, ePacket, is now profitable for the USPS. It took them a few years to scale up but it's been profitable for years now.

Source?

https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library... estimates $74 million profit for 2016 using internal data.

https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/document-library... says they were profitable in 2015. See page 8 and footnote 17.

As far as I can tell, there's been no other public info released since then.

Excellent sources!

Noticed this direct shipping years ago, the first time it took weeks for a small part to be delivered. I think the absurdly low cost reveals just how much you can jam into a shipping container for the current flat rate.

Weirder when you think about it from a fuel efficiency perspective; it probably takes a few drops of diesel to move a t-shirt 5000 miles.

Edit: NOTE- if you still buy stuff on ebay, be sure to check the feedback page on bulk "US based" sellers. Currently some of them actually ship from china even though their location is set to the US/canada.

>Weirder when you think about it from a fuel efficiency perspective; it probably takes a few drops of diesel to move a t-shirt 5000 miles.

Yep, try looking up the fuel efficiency number for shipping freight by boat, train, or airplane. It's really amazing just how efficient boats are. There's a good reason our distant ancestors had worldwide trade routes centuries or even millennia ago using boats.

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