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
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