Rural small businesses may be affected by postal delivery changes in the future.
The Postmaster General told Congress today that massive deficits could force the post office to eliminate one day of mail delivery each week. The most likely day to be skipped is Tuesday, which is apparently the lightest mail day.
The Post Office delivered 202 billion items last year, 9 billion less than in 2007. The Postmaster General says, “A revolution in the way people communicate has structurally changed the way America uses the mail.” More people now use email and the Internet for personal communication, paying bills or viewing business statements online, and business correspondence. Junk mail filled in for a while, and allowed the Post Office to make more money, but the economy has even negatively affected junk mail. I knew we’d find a pony in this economic mess somewhere.
Once again, rural communities will be disproportionately affected. According to a Pew Research poll, half of all adult Americans who live in non-rural areas can get online with a fast internet connection at home or work. But only about one third of rural Americans can. Rural Americans who rely on traditional mail delivery will be at a disadvantage.
But many rural areas across the country don’t get postal delivery on a daily basis even now. Local adaptation to the uniqueness of each geographical community has always been allowed. When we moved to the mountains 19 years ago, the local post offices were closed on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings. But with broadband limited in many rural areas, traditional mail delivery is still something we depend on.
Dan G. Blair, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, suggested in his testimony that Congress review both delivery and restrictions it imposed on the closing of small and rural post offices. So postal delivery is not the only area of mail operations being evaluated, and odds are not the only change to be made.
Obviously, many questions will have to be answered as to how rural small business owners might be affected by these changes. Sales taxes, income taxes, and payroll all have to be filed or postmarked by certain dates. Small business owners will need to plan differently and plan ahead, or close our businesses to allow us to make trips down to the Post Office. We don’t even have a mail drop-off point in our part of the county anymore. If you want to mail something and don’t have it ready for your mail carrier, you have to bring it directly to the Post Office.
Many rural small businesses use US Postal Priority Mail for shipping (rather than UPS or FedEx) because the post office doesn’t charge a pick-up fee for packages and even provides free boxes, tape and labels. We use Postal Priority Mail for customer orders whenever possible, because having our mail carrier pick up our packages daily when he delivers our mail, saves us forty minutes each day. That time savings adds up for a small business owner, and we don’t miss making the round trip downtown every day.
I wonder what the effect on our business will be if we can’t ship orders every day of the week…unless we close our retail shop to walk-in customers and drive our web customer packages downtown. This is not a small issue for us because we are fortunate to ship several hundred orders a month. We may be located in a rural area, but we ship our handmade craft worldwide.
With one postal price increase just put into effect last week, and another one due again in May, I have to wonder how long ‘free’ postal priority mail pickup service for rural small businesses wil be provided.
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