My mailbox is permanently jammed with paper that useless paper that is both produced and hauled away to a landfill by diesel fuel.
No I do not want your credit card offer.
No I do not want to switch phone plans.
No I do not want an extended warranty.
Delivering less mail each day doesn't really make much difference if the mail carrier still has to come to my neighborhood 6 times a week.
Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or driving their funny looking trucks) but are they really necessary?
Edit to add: since running post offices is explicitly a Federal power, a conversion of US Mail to being electronically based would be completely within scope. There would be no arguing over "states rights" that tends to become a logjam for any other national infrastructure or policy changes.
IMO, a better option is to switch to 3 days/week delivery, and where addresses are very spread out, require centralized boxes.
Passports, driving licenses, polling cards, draft registration, pensions, company registrations, patents, copyrights, court summons, speeding fines, inheritance, tax paperwork, census, etc etc.
It’s much simpler to perform these duties if you have a means of communication that can reliably reach every citizen.
There's all sorts of philosophical arguments as well: government services shouldn't need to turn a profit, all citizens need to be able to interact with the State and the post office provides a way to do that, mail-in voting, Post Offices can offer stuff like general delivery for those without permanent addresses, etc.
Sure, by that standard we could probably reduce to weekly or even monthly mail service. It's been suggested since at least 2008 we drop Tuesday mail service as almost nobody sends mail on Saturdays and there's no mail service on Sundays.
I haven't got a snail mail from my government for years at this point, nor did I needed to send one that way.
Mail in voting.
It doesn't need to make money or "break even." We just pay the cost in tax or postage that is needed to run the service.
https://www.canadapost-postescanada.ca/cpc/en/personal/consu...
I’ve done it (several times, ‘cuz ten years), you’ll notice an almost immediate reduction in junk mail.
OTOH, for less than a dollar a year, I can go find other clouds to shake my fist at.
Also I'm sure that if a bill were ever passed to stop junk mail by default, it would be utilizing the infrastructure built by this service
Getting flyers that are subsidized by the post office for stuff like lawnmowers and patio furniture even though I live in an apartment is peak absurdity.
I still receive her mail.
Here's the kicker: the mail is addressed to a name she hadn't legally had since the late 1970s. She divorced and remarried - which meant taking her new husband's last name - then lived another 30-ish years, died, I moved in, and it's been ten years of me there.
It's an insanely wasteful practice.
Of course, where I live the USPS person stops in a general area and does all the outgoing deliveries on foot, but it's conceivable that some days an entire block may receive no incoming mail. Also, we need to take into account things like fuel costs for planes & such throughout the entire supply chain.
No they don’t, that’s what the red flag on the mailbox is for. Everywhere I’ve lived, if you don’t put the flag up and there’s no incoming mail for you, they don’t stop.
But of course the issue is that the junk mail is subsidizing the actual mail. There's likely no way the USPS could be financially solvent, at least with the current level of service, if junk mail were eliminated. Personally I'd be fine with that. One or two mail deliveries per week would be more than enough!
(My gut says that it would not; that the fuel use of junk mail constitutes a very small drop in a very large bucket. But I'd love to be wrong about this.)
50-60% of all mail is marketing slop
Your numbers show exactly what I was guessing to be true though. Incredible this has never been enforced.
That's what makes it a public service.
Junk mail just makes stamps cheaper. That route had to be driven anyway. You have generally what amounts to a right to put a stamped letter in your box at the end of the driveway, put up the flag, and get serviced. The route has to be driven regardless.
We could eliminate all marketing mail, make a large push to make all billing digital, and USPS would still have to drive most routes most days.
A fix would have to reduce service significantly, or introduce a new "Register for pickup" process to signal your need of service.
We could have also made those brand new mail vehicles hybrid or something.