To the editor,
So read the notice that became all to familiar to Amtrak passengers in the 1970s as the Nixon administration tried to make good on it’s promise to several freight lines to shut it down.
The process is called de-marketing and it works like this: First you make your service so inconvenient and unreliable that in desperation your customers go somewhere else. Then you throw up your hands and say to your regulators “there are no customers so you might as well let us shut this down.”
Now, after a congressional order put an end to their plan to close over 10,000 community post offices, the United States Postal Service has begun a campaign of de-marketing them by cutting their opening hours to as little as two hours a day.
The so called “last mile” is the bane of logistics and yet companies like UPS and FedEx who are among the most competitive in the world recognize that it’s this “last mile” service which forms the foundation of their systems. In the long run de-marketing will cost the Postal Service more in lost revenues than it saves in operating costs.
The Postal Service’s POST plan burdens the affected communities with the cost of picking up the slack. It will mean lost work and increased transportation costs as customers are forced to make return trips to pick up parcels and mail which requires a signature. And for our neighbors who are the most vulnerable and unstable among us, who have neither the luxury of internet access nor the basic necessity of automobile transportation, closing the Post Office means denying them the means to pay bills, receive prescriptions, shop, or maintain contact with friends and family.
Thomas Hall
Ranier, MN
