April 23, 2012
A NYT article on the financial difficulties of the Postal Service concluded with a comment from Art Sackler, the chairman of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service:
“They haven’t had a good track record when it comes to developing new lines of business.”
This organization is identified as “a mailing industry group that includes companies like FedEx.”
It might have been worth reminding readers that FedEx and UPS have in the past used their political power to limit the ability of the Postal Service to compete with them. A few years back the Postal Service had a successful ad campaign that highlighted the fact that its express service was much cheaper than FedEx or UPS.
These companies then went to court to try to stop the campaign. After they lost their court case, they then went to Congress, which helped to persuade the Postal Service to end this particular ad campaign. At least in this particular case the Postal Service’s main problem was a lack of political clout, not a bad business model.
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