USPS Posts $1.1 Billion Loss For Third Quarter
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Postal Service ended its third fiscal year quarter (April 1 – June 30) with a greater-than-expected net loss of $1.1 billion. The national economic slowdown reduced mail volume at an accelerated pace and continued inflation in fuel prices produced rapidly escalating transportation costs. Despite these financial challenges, Postal Service employees delivered record-breaking service performance in the third quarter.
For the third quarter ending June 30:
Operating revenue was $17.9 billion, a decrease of $437 million, or 2.4 percent, compared to the same period last year.
Operating expenses totaled $19.0 billion, an increase of only $178 million, or 1.0 percent, from the third quarter last year, despite substantial increases in fuel prices.
Expenses include $1.4 billion of the $5.6 billion payment to the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund that the Postal Service is required to make by Sept. 30, 2008, under the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006.
Mail volume was 48.5 billion pieces, a 5.5 percent drop from the same period last year. First-Class Mail and Standard Mail volume were each down 5.5 percent in the third quarter, reflecting the challenging economic environment.
The fiscal 2008 year-to-date net loss totals $1.13 billion. The Postal Service had essentially broken even in the first half of the fiscal year. With no economic recovery in sight, the Postal Service expects an end-of-year, economy-driven net loss.
“When the economy does rebound, mail volume may not return to previous levels,” said Postmaster General John Potter. “This requires that we significantly accelerate process improvements and the realignment of resources in order to achieve long-term financial success. Failure to do so will threaten our ability to meet our mission of providing universal service at affordable prices.”
Record-Breaking Service Performance
In the third fiscal quarter, on-time delivery performance reached record highs for all three categories of First-Class Mail the Postal Service tracks. Overnight service was 97 percent on-time, up from 96 percent the same period last year. Two-day service was 95 percent on-time, up from 93 percent the same period last year. Three-day service was 94 percent on-time, up from 91 percent the same period last year.
“These outstanding results show the tremendous dedication of our employees to provide excellent customer service, especially as we continue to work with our unions to further reduce costs and increase efficiency,” said Potter.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Would be nice if he defined employee because so far htey only treat us like the enemy and the cause of all failings.
August 6th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
[…] USPS Posts $1.1 Billion Dollar Loss For Third Quarter […]
August 6th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
The postal service must do what other large corporations are doing- lay off white collar employees. It can no longer afford diversity specialists and those that reside in the land of misfit managers-operations support. If your job doesn’t directly facilitate moving the mail then it should be considered superflous, as most of these are. The public will not stand for these maake work jobs anymore.
August 7th, 2008 at 7:11 am
We just received letters yesterday that we were being reassigned out of our bid cluster. The Senior Area Manager said in our stand up it was his decision to close our facility to save the post office money; but wait, it’s not closing and the really good news is other they are going to keep it open with about 20 people, but still pay the utilities and building cost just like when 400 of us were still there…..in the mean time he told us they have contracted out our jobs to a contractor that hires illegals…nice….at the HASP they currently have contractors using illegals and foreign nationals and we get back half the mail to be worked or they flat send it to the wrong location…San Antonio instead of it’s real destination of San Diego and let the other end fix their screw up. This idiot(Senior Area Supervisor) Just got through screwing up the Ft. Worth bid Cluster now they have moved him to Dallas to implode this one! Over the last 12 years I have seen these incompetent managers put in million dollar machines and tear them out..we had 3.5 million dollar camera systems throughout the building that have never been turned on…I mean never..We had a thief in the building tampering with my time card and hiding my gear and messing with my equipment. I caught this jerk messing with my time card and I reported it to management and and the postal inspectors(another worthless group of idiots)told me the cameras don’t work and then they informed the thief that I turned him in(he had two supervisors buddies)and I had death threats called at the post office pay phone to my unlisted number(his supervisor buddies gave it to him from the files in the office) and was harassed daily by this jerk..postal inspectors didn’t do anything because they said I was white and they didn’t want to get involve because the criminal was black and the supervisors were black..go figure.
We have had a dozen plant managers go through the door over the last 12 years and everyone has managed to screw the plant up…..either trying to work under the table deals with contractors using illegals or better yet there are several former plant managers that set up contracts just before they retired and one is now the managing supervisor at company he gave the contracts to! This current idiot is no different. He is jocking for his big kick back bonus and the next rung up the ladder of incompetent USPS execs!
August 7th, 2008 at 7:44 am
The incompetent management up above and bad decisions have cost the postal service dearly. Now it’s time for the debt to be paid, but unfortunately it will be the workers who will have to pay with cut backs, and possible layoffs.
August 7th, 2008 at 8:53 am
The workroom floor toxic,Management which is top-heavy and where the reduction in force is needed.Management has created breaking point stress among the workers, while collecting a 39%raise.Our Managers (many) are GED diploma graduates, and lack management skills and do not have the skill sets to manage. Its an inbred , political system.Not exactly cutting - edge.
August 7th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
My letter carrier retired. Now it costs the PO/Taxpayer twice as much to deliver the mail. When the guys that came in under the Union sellout get to be the majority you retirees had better watch out. You sold them down the Social Security river. I hope they tell the PO to cut your retirement so they can have a pay raise. 78% 0f the PO costs are labor. No company can make a profit with costs like that. Blame the managers but you still are a bunch of greedy people who don’t have a clue how a business that isn’t a monopoly make money. You still are government employees. Remember the delivery vehicles that had USPS.gov on them?
August 8th, 2008 at 1:37 am
‘preciate the sacrifice. Heh, heh. ’scuse me while i carry my pile of money back to Tex-ass.
August 8th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Free the Mail: Apparently you are not a postal employee, don’t have a clue how our retirement system works. Until you have the knowledge, you shouldn’t make any comments here. Go find out what OPM stands for and look that up before you open your mouth and put your foot into it. That is where our retirement funds come from. Just like any other federal employee that retires, VA, IRS, etc. As for costing the post office twice as much to deliver the mail…again, if you knew what was going on inside this organization rather than hear-say, you should shut your mouth. Then the workers see that management stands around and yacks all day while we are out delivering mail, sorting mail, etc and we are held accountable but there is no accountability for them. The managers skew the numbers to obtain hefty raises(one reason the salaries are 78% off the workforce) and the upper managers do the same. There are now more delivery points, higher fuel costs that are driving up the cost of this business. Meanwhile, managers are receiving hefty raises, hefty relocation fees to transfer to other sites that are overburdened with managers. Move the incompetent managers around the states and back again. Still the mail gets delayed. Five managers here yesterday that make over a half million dollars in salaries and STILL the mail is delayed. They can’t manage nor can they justify their hefty salaries. But what does the POSTMASTER GENERAL POTTER DO, he gives himself a HEFTY 39% pay INCREASE along with his newly named VICE PRESIDENTS. (the lowly craft workders got 1% raises and increase in percentage we pay for health insurance EACH YEAR) When managers retire they are hired as private contractors to the post office and their buddies hire them. Corruption, nepotism, etc. is all the norm for the USPS. It’s not the labor force that does this, it’s the management! So go away until you know what BS goes on inside the post office and stop posting what you have no idea about….
August 8th, 2008 at 7:22 am
I worked at a P&D as a casual for a little more than a year.
Cronyism, Nepotism and Favoritism! That’s all they know.
I watched a black lady with a phony tilte walk around all day doing nothing and getting paid for it.
I did the work for a 19 year old girl who really couldn’t( or wouldn’t) carry her weight. She had connections to management, so she got hired. I didn’t, so I quit. Couldn’t stomach her gettin’ paid for my work.
There were people who worked there many years as casuals only to see their jobs given to “insiders”.
There were many other crooked things going, including embezzlement, but management was incompetent.
The plant manager got his job, because his dad had been a Post Master, so what woud you expect?
I will cheer the day the Post Office is completely privatized.
August 8th, 2008 at 9:18 am
uh….seems like they basically said over 5 billion went toward a required payment to the retirement fund which kicked the amount up to 19 billion….which they refered to as “operating expenses”….but if you subtract that amount the supposed operating expenses drops to less than 14 billion…now when they say compared to last years third quarter of 17 billion approx. then that means that last years third quarter didn’t necessarily include the over 5 billion payout to shore up the retiree funds….so actually wouldn’t that mean that operating expenses were less than 14 billion and we actually did a approximately 3.9 billion dollar profit over last year?……i mean, is it just me?….maybe i m crazy……..
August 8th, 2008 at 9:21 am
oops i mean like a couple billion or so forgot about the 437 million deal…whatever they are all full of it anyway
August 9th, 2008 at 4:39 am
yeah so i guess they about broke even lost a few hundred million probably because of the reduced mail volume and fuel prices…..most of that 1.1 billion was just because they were finishing up paying their 5.6 billion with a 1.4 billion dollar payment by september 30, 2008. why didn’t they let the public know that? the vague statement about usps losing 1.1 billion in one quarter is misleading to say the least…..
August 10th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
They can lose 10 billion as far as I am concerned, until some of these do-nothing management jobs are eliminated then I am not going to worry about it. When these people are let go, then I will take it seriously. We could save money by putting these “experienced” postal employees on the steet to carry mail and letting some of the TE’s go.
August 10th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
hey ‘free the mail’,did you know the post office does not not run on tax money? it runs on business mail you get in your mailbox. no, you didn’t know that because you are a idiot. the reason the post office is losing money is because they have too many lazy,inbred,supervisors and postmasters who don’t do anything to earn a paycheck !!!!!
August 10th, 2008 at 9:04 pm
“free the mail”
The Post Office is a government organization, it isn’t supposed to make a profit. That being said, the management morons are clueless. Actually, I shouldn’t say clueless. They know what they are doing. They are trying to save their necks by screwing the bottom people. They are only concerned about the pfp’s. Where else can you get a 39% raise when you have screwed up the post office. Why is management going ahead with the fss deployment? Why, because the fss is costing millions of dollars to implement and operate. Management keeps saying mail volume is going down(true), so why aren’t they shelving this until things get better. Also, if it doesn’t get better, why don’t they scrap it. A complete waste of money if the volume is tanking. The fss machine won’t pay for itself. Management will never admit any of this because it was made out to be the endall of processing. Then, I hear it isn’t working as good as they say it was going to, shocking development. Want another disaster? Well, how about the PARS system? PARS is a complete joke. How much money was wasted on that system. I can only imagine. Management never gets anything working real good. They just go onto the next system and waste alot of money. I don’t care if they do get machines to do some of the processing but just get THE DAMN THINGS WORKING REALLY GOOD. Management is only interested in one thing. Get the numbers to look good so they get the bonus. A majority of the management people couldn’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag. Most of them should be fired because they are the ones who allowed the mess the Post Office is in now. Management wants the bonus first, then they try to worry about other things later. I wonder how many more VP’s will pop up with salaries around $200,000. Also, how about all of the people that will be hired as support people? Management personnel have increased over the last five years. Have the craft workers increased? No, management isn’t serious about saving alot of money until they drop people from their ranks.
August 18th, 2008 at 3:17 am
the function of the FSS and other new equipment is to sort the mail to the delivery level. this way it is no longer necessary for the carriers to sort the mail by hand before going out on their routes. The goal is to eliminate a third of the carrier positions. their is a video on you tube from the Post Office stating this. as to the practice of nepotism, now its mostly about getting high enough so your job is one of the last to go. In the private sector, the best minds would be brought in to broaden income streams and cut out the cancerous dead weight. In this organization short sighted “me first” management is the rule. I don’t fear the PO being privatized, it would actually save real workers .
September 1st, 2008 at 11:36 pm
i was just layed off last week, with the assurance of my manager that as one of 4 TEs in my office, that i did’nt have to worry. After busting my a** for the last year, watching about 10 “light duty” or “injured” employees sitting on their behind, letting me take the slack plus full routes. This last year has been rediculous, i read some of the comments above, and favoritism is the key word. I had a tendency to “question” my supervisor on his decisions and I was the chosen one to have “let go”. How bout some pay cuts….watching light duty employees milk the usps, plus overpaid supervisers that have never carried a full route in 100 degree weather, makes it clear whose behind you have to kiss to keep a job with usps. I received a letter with no contact #, no way to inquire about another position at usps, my manager just said, nope theres no one to talk to about this, sorry. thats all he had to say. and sent my on my way. what company does that? now i will try to get a job at ups or fed ex. usps doesnt appreciate the hard workers, just what looks good on the books.