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Comment by SeoxyS | Hacker News Reader

If it was wildly successful, how did we end up with tons of private competitors with a large market share (FedEx, UPS, DHL, OnTrac, etc). The U.S. Is one of the only countries where the state run postal service isn't sufficient. In Switzerland, for example, there is only the Swiss Post. Most countries, to my knowledge, operate with just one major postal network.

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> If it was wildly successful, how did we end up with tons of private competitors with a large market share (FedEx, UPS, DHL, OnTrac, etc).

Because the US Postal Service is viewed as a utility, and required to service every address in the continental US (as well as most of its territories). Fedex, UPS, and other private carriers are under no such obligation, and so can extract profits from the most profitable routes or services, leaving USPS with more less profitable services to provide (first class, bulk mail).

If you don't think the USPS provides a phenomenal service for the price they charge, you're insane. I can send an ounce of paper across a continent for $0.50-$1.09.

Diseconomies of scale.

The last mile of shipping is the most expensive. In the US, there are tons of last miles that are thousands of miles from very large cities.

Switzerland is a tiny country relative to the US, so it's much cheaper to deliver mail.

There are many niches within the general category of "post". USPS's focus (and monopoly) is on first-class and bulk mail.

How much cost/time does it cost Swiss Post to ship a package 4000km ?

It's at least 3x the price of USPS:

https://www.post.ch/en/private/a-z-of-subjects/prices-sendin...

Erm. What are you comparing here?

I read your comment as 'Given USPS can send a package over 4000km in the same country, let's compare that with international charges in Switzerland'¹. Is that correct? Because that would be a liiiittle bit misleading in my world and I'd like to compare Swiss international charges with a USPS delivery from New York to Reykjavik please.

① Apologies if that isn't the case. But 4000km just felt too close to the east coast to west coast distance.

That awkward moment when you realize DHL is a German company.

There's also a number of alternate services for the post in a number of other countries. FedEx is not a duplicate of the post - it's for sending small but high value things extremely fast. And between FedEx One Rate and FedEx Smart Post, it's pretty clear that they view USPS as a competitor to be respected.

All of those companies that you listed are profiting off of USPS capacity.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-mail-does-the-trick-for-fede...

Because Microsoft, Dell, Apple, etc. can all exist and be wildly successful at the same time?

I might misunderstand postal services here. Is that mail/letters only? Or does it include parcels?

Because as far as I'm aware, Switzerland opened up to DHL et al. I'm not sure about mail/letters tbh.

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