Pushing The Envelope Evolution of the USPS in a Modern World

[Music]

there are things i can’t force

i must adjust there are times when the

greatest change needed

is a change of viewpoint

[Music]

do you remember the feeling of getting

your college acceptance letter

now maybe you’d already you had gotten

into that school online but the

feeling of rushing home from some

meaningless day late in your senior year

the big envelope already waiting for you

there on your kitchen table

maybe there was a water bottle in there

or a t-shirt

a lanyard or a bumper sticker some

memento of the place you’d spend the

next four years

for many college-age students this might

be one of the only positive or memorable

experiences you’ve ever had with the

postal service

but in reality it’s just such a small

part of what we do

and how we’ve impacted almost every

american life

and beyond so with that in mind i want

to start this off the percentage

48 percent each year the united states

postal service delivers roughly

48 of the world’s mail volume

in the year 2019 that was almost 150

billion pieces of mail

but why so much and why so much more

here than anyone else

well for starters every day of the week

regardless of

distance weather or cost letter carriers

from the usps

reach every business and residential

address in the united states

it’s part of something called our

universal service obligation

what that basically means is that we go

everywhere

it doesn’t matter how much money you

make or how nice your neighborhood is

if you live there we go there and we

deliver with the same security and

promptness that

you’ve come to expect from us everything

from people’s medications

tax returns their government stimulus

checks and

even things you order online after

you’ve had a couple too many drinks

and we collect mail and oliver roots too

wedding invites

thank you cards christmas letters

packages from people that have moved

their businesses into their homes during

the pandemic

and of course people’s mail-in ballots

it’s one of the reasons that we’re

consistently voted

america’s most trusted government agency

year after year

even as trust in the government has

continued to decline in fact people

trust us so much

that in between the years of 1913 and

1915

there are at least seven documented

stories of people asking

excuse me letter carriers to ship their

children for them kind of gives you a

sense of how people feel about the

postal service

hi i’m lucas sirio i’m a senior at

syracuse university

and i’m a former letter carrier for the

united states postal service

i personally came into this job last may

without a lot of other offices or summer

work

and for me it’s been pretty much a

perfect fit reliable hours

great co-workers historic union a chance

to be outside every day

and frankly a pretty good halloween

costume too

of course it doesn’t come without hard

work any new carrier can expect to work

between

60 and 70 hours a week and some weeks

without a day off at all

in the month of january alone i walked

on average nine miles a day

with the longest of those coming in at

just below 13.

now to give you a sense of what 13 miles

feels like well

start here the westcott theater and walk

all the way to the carrier dome

and back five times

now let’s just say for the sake of the

hypothetical that it’s 35 degrees out

pouring rain and everything you’re

carrying is made out of paper sounds

like fun right

not exactly in fact i spent so much time

outside this past winter

and the dryness of the air mixed with

the paper mail

took all the moisture out of my hands to

the point that i had to redo the touch

id on my phone because my

fingerprint started to erode but i’m not

just here to talk about how far i can

walk

or the fact that my phone is so old it

still uses touch id

or even the fact that without

fingerprints i’d be the next great

american serial killer

but i’m more so here to say that after

working for the postal service for

all of last summer and for another two

month stint this past december i really

feel that

people our age and some younger and

probably even some older

don’t have a good grasp on what it is

that we do how we work

and in my minds to the longevity of

america’s most beloved government agency

now that said i can see some of the ways

in which the mail stream is mysterious

it’s probably not something you’ve ever

needed to think about a lot and in my

mind that’s a good thing

it means we’re doing our jobs well and

we’re doing them right

every day when you get home from school

or work the mail should already be there

in a box on the curb by your driveway

and a slot in your front door

or in the mail room of your apartment

building but as times change and the way

the world does business has continued to

evolve

it’s fundamentally impacted our service

websites like ebay

etsy just simple things email text

message

recently zoom as the way the world

communicates changes

it’s changed the way that we serve those

people maybe you’ve also seen headlines

about the financial trouble facing the

postal service right now or

maybe the decommissioning of mail

sorting machines across the united

states and

while i have you here we’re going to

talk about some of that too

now one of the largest financial

barriers for the postal service is the

amount of our workforce that’s aging

the average age of a letter carrier is

48

10 years older than that of other

courier services like fedex

dhl and ups now the reason that creates

a problem

is the nature of being a letter carrier

has dramatically changed in the last two

decades

postal service data shows that first

class mail volume has decreased by

almost half since the year 2000

a trend that was accelerated by both the

financial crisis in 2008

and the pandemic just this past year

people and businesses

just don’t send letters like they used

to now

on the contrary the meteoric rise of

amazon and

other online retailers that use courier

services has

dramatically increased the number of

packages we deliver the pew research

center found that the number of packages

the postal service delivers has

doubled in the last decade to give you a

sense of what that looks like

well with the pandemic forcing most

christmas shopping to happen online this

year

there would be days in january and

december where i would clock in at six

o’clock in the morning

and not leave till 8 o’clock at night

without delivering a single letter

just delivering packages so that other

carriers could actually deliver the mail

for these routes

and there were a lot of post offices all

across the united states that were in

even worse shape than ours was

now the reason this creates an issue is

because

almost everything about being a mailman

from the length of our roots

the size of our trucks the way that

we’re taught how to walk when we first

get trained

even the size of a mailbox all of these

things were designed with

delivering letters in mind and not to

have to accommodate packages like we do

now

you can see this pretty clearly

reflected in the vehicles we drive

now this is the gruman llv or long life

vehicle

it’s kind of what you think of when you

see a mail truck sliding doors for

getting in and out quickly the steering

wheel on the right side

and a tray for flats and letters up

front next to the driver

now they were first designed in 1987

and they continued to be made until 1994

and they were only supposed to last for

20 years

so it’s pretty remarkable that in the

year 2021 i can still clock into work

get inside of one and carry mail all day

long it gives new meaning to the name

long life vehicle

and oddly enough not much about these

guys have changed

in 2006 ford released its own model the

ffv

but the big change came in 2015 when the

postal service added the ram promaster

to our fleets

as you can see this is a cargo van and

that

is a reflection of package volume these

are probably the kind of male trucks

you’ve seen in and around campus

now the last vehicle have on this slide

is more something to be hopeful for

and something you may have seen on the

internet recently the specs for an

electric postal vehicle

now while it is one of this

administration’s goals to electrify as

much of the government fleet as possible

i have no idea when we might have a

chance to see one of these on the curb

outside of your house now

getting back into letter carriers for a

second what does the average letter

carrier look like

well not such a simple question to

answer for starters we’re one of the

largest employers of veterans in the

united states

they make up about 16 of our workforce

similarly the pew research center found

that in 18 states

and the district of columbia more than

half of postal employers are women

including my home state of maine and

lastly

only 57 of the postal workforce is white

compared to 78

of the national workforce it’s not

perfect but we’re getting better at

reflecting the people that we serve

every day now

when i first agreed to do a ted talk

about working for the usps

one of the things i was most concerned

about was clearing up the number of

misconceptions i saw about our services

particularly leading up to the 2020

election people were

cancelled service with ballots there

were misconceptions saying it was just

downright unsafe to deliver

your ballot through the mail service at

all and others saying that the usps was

intentionally uh decommissioning male

sorting machines across the united

states to slow down the delivery of

ballots

and while i have you here i want to

address some of these concerns

and i should disclaim that before i get

started i really can only speak in my

own experience and from what i’ve seen

but the first one’s easy

i mean any letter you or i send is

probably going to be first class

if you’re putting a stamp on it it’s

first class that means it’s deliverable

anywhere in the united states

and if it can’t be delivered where you

sent it it’ll get sent back to you

anywhere in the u.s just for the cost of

a stamp

in terms of overwhelming the postal

service with ballots well

this one’s interesting too because the

letter volume for a root

can change by two or three times just

depending on the day of the week

or the time of year i remember

distinctly doing a route for the first

time

on the tuesday after mlk day now we knew

it would be heavy because it was the day

after a holiday but we didn’t know it

would be like this

for root that usually got two two and a

half trays of letters

i ended up getting six and a half on

that day to give you a sense of what

that looks like

well a tray of letters is about three

feet wide and the letter well no i’m

sure you’ve seen them before so

you can conceptualize what 20 feet of

letters looks like

sure it was a long day but we got it

done because that’s what we’re designed

to do

so even if every registered voter on a

route requested their ballots

and they all came in around the same

time we’d be able to deliver them

that’s what we’re here for now this last

one

a lot of these concerns about the it

being unsafe to deliver your ballots

were

actually related to the fourth point i

saw misconceptions on social media about

mail sorting machines being wired to

pluck your ballot out of the sorting

machine to put it off to the side to

somehow the postal service knew who was

voting for who but

i know at least for my post office that

when i grab a ballot from your house

and i bring it back to the post office

that night with the rest of my outgoing

mail

well the clerk is going to separate it

out from the rest of the outgoing

put it in a separate bin and that night

when all the carriers come back from the

roots

drive it straight to town hall no mail

sorting machines involved

whatsoever voting by mail has been and

hopefully will continue to be one of the

safest ways to vote

and in terms of the fourth rumor on this

slide well there’s actually some truth

in this one

because of the male volume decrease

we’ve already talked about the decision

was made in

male sorting plants all across the

united states to decommission some male

sorting machines to

make space on plant floors for more

packages to give you some context a male

sorting machine can be the size of an 18

wheeler

so it’s no question that when some of

these machines were just collecting dust

the post office opted to get rid of them

however even with all of these concerns

addressed

i still think one of the largest turn

offs of the postal service for young

people is

actually having to go to the post office

it’s confusing

it’s a time suck and it’s downright

annoying

you have to wait in line if you fill out

the wrong form you get

kicked to the back i mean even with the

pandemic people are even less inclined

to want to

stand in public places however

in the modern day and age you can get

everything you need to use the postal

service without

ever stepping foot inside of a brick and

mortar post office

because you can buy stamps at the

drugstore or the grocery store

and funny enough now there are websites

that will email you or

excuse me that will mail you stamps and

if you want to send a package well

as long as you know the weight and the

dimensions of the package you can just

put it on your porch once you’ve printed

a shipping label for it

and that day when a letter carrier is

assigned to the route that you live on

they’ll get a slip in the morning saying

that there’s a package on that address

and when they bring your mail for the

day they’ll grab it and bring it back to

the post office with them

change is slow but revolving

now speaking of evolving in 1971

with the formation of the modern postal

service it was decreed that the usps

would

receive zero tax dollars none

it helps us stay nonpartisan and

independent we support ourselves

entirely with the sale of postage stamps

packages in fact in the year 2019

the usps sold almost 13 billion

worth of mail and mail related services

so how then did the usps get into so

much debt

well that’s a great question and we’re

going to talk about one of those reasons

now the self-funding model worked and

worked for a long time

we could make enough to keep the lights

on pay our employees a fair and living

wage

upkeep our trucks and our routes and buy

us enough gas to get us to

every address in the united states in

fact

it was credible so much so that in 2006

under the younger george bush congress

passed something called the

postal account and enhancement act into

law now

the paea among other things basically

required the postal service to put away

over 70 billion dollars over the next

decade to pay for the cost

of its own employees retirements and

pensions for 75 years into the future

no other government agency had this

requirement

to be fair the postal service felt like

this was achievable for how much it was

making at the time

that was until 2008 in the financial

crisis and we see our first big decline

in mail volume

now being any good law-abiding

government agency the postal service

continued to put money away into this

account

until we no longer could and it began

defaulting on those payments in 2012.

now lucky for us the postal

accountability and enhancement act was

repealed in 2020

but the debt largely still remains and

it’s helped legitimize people’s claims

that

we should privatize the postal service

contract out our routes to companies

like fedex and ups

and let them decide who and how the mail

gets delivered in the united states

although in my estimation there is no

other company or organization on the

face of the planet

that’s as well equipped to do what we do

as we are

but more so to that point we actually

work with these companies

every single day for instance if you

wanted to send something two-day

shipping and it needed to go halfway

across the country

it might end up on a fedex or a ups

plane even if you sent it through the

usps

on the contrary if you live in somewhere

in rural montana or

even parts of the state of maine if the

fedex or ups deems that your package is

too small or too cost ineffective for

them to want to deliver

they may give it off to a letter carrier

and we’ll take it for the final leg for

that

similarly if you were to order something

online that weighed more than 70 pounds

it likely is gonna get sent through

fedex or ups or even

dhl weight regulations help keep postal

workers safe

and lastly if you live in a part of the

country like mine that’s

too small to have its own amazon

distribution plant well

nearly everything that gets sent through

amazon comes through the united states

postal service

our government status helps keep our

rates fixed which keeps us accessible

and affordable to the communities that

we serve

so i hope you’ve answered some of your

questions about what the post office is

how it works and why it’s important that

it remains public

well-funded and accessible for all

americans and beyond

if you’re interested in supporting the

postal service well

you could work for us although i

understand most people don’t have the

time for that

so i implore you to do it a different

way go buy a book of stamps and

pay your bills by the mail or send

someone you care about a letter

grandparents will hold on to them

forever friends love something that’s

handwritten

in a digital world where everything

vanishes immediately then hey

you could even write one to your love

interest now no guarantee they won’t

still reject you but

it’s a little more romantic than a dm so

go on

shoot your shot support the postal

service thank you