How the USPS will help us through the supply chain issues of this holiday season | Opinion
The Postal Service got us through the pandemic. It is being called on again to help us through the holidays amid a supply chain crisis.
The holiday season is upon us, and in addition to consumer anxiety about being able to find the items they want to send as gifts, given supply shortages, Americans also worry about being able to ship those gifts to their loved ones on time and at an affordable price. Demand always rises around the holidays, and as we recover from the worst of the pandemic, this year’s demand for shipping packages will almost certainly meet or exceed last year’s.
Fortunately, the Postal Service is well-positioned to deliver both holiday cards and gifts for America.
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In preparation for a shipping volume increase, the Postal Service has hired 40,000 seasonal workers and has installed 112 high-speed package processing machines (processing up to 3200 packages per hour) for the holidays. It has buoyed its six-day services with the capacity to handle an additional 4.5 million additional packages per day, marking an 18 percent increase in daily capacity.
The Postal Service, during this rocky time for consumers and business, will further cement its role as the only carrier with a mandate, and the ability, to deliver to homes and businesses in every US zip code. Private carriers, on the other hand, have made it a regular practice to raise rates, levy heavy surcharges for deliveries in many rural zip codes, and have even denied some retailers and manufacturers access to their delivery services altogether. The Postal Service does not engage in these practices because it is a public service and has a mandate to do so.
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Legislation is pending in Congress that if enacted would solidify the Postal Service’s ability (for years to come) to be that support beam we have continued to rely upon again and again. The bipartisan Postal Reform Act is needed to ensure USPS can continue to follow through on its core mission to deliver mail and packages — in rain, sleet or snow — six days a week. A critical provision in this bill would allow the Postal Service to continue to provide certainty to American consumers and businesses by codifying that mail and packages will continue to be delivered together, in an integrated delivery network, six days a week to every address in America. Unsurprisingly, this provision is opposed by private carriers, as the private carriers, such as UPS and Fed-Ex, are more interested in profit and market share than reliability.
USPS alone will not stave off the impact of growing supply chain worries, but at a time when people need to count on carriers most, USPS and its role as a public service will help to mitigate these issues.
As much as the pandemic was hard on us all, the Postal Service played a critical role in keeping our economy and the network between loved ones open. It plays that role once again as we navigate trucking shortages, cargo-ship traffic jams and the “everything shortage” that everyone is talking about. Congress should support the Postal Service by passing the Postal Reform Act, with language to codify its six-day integrated network, so that USPS can continue to support us, as American consumers and businesses, through future crises.
John M. McHugh is the chairman of the Package Coalition. Previously, he was secretary of the U.S. Army and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Northern and Central New York.
This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: How the USPS will help us through the holiday supply chain | Opinion
