1. Why is it important for the USPS to have a high volume of mail to process?
2. What caused productivity to increase?
3. What impact did competitive pressures have on the USPS?
4. What measures did the USPS adopt to increase competitiveness?
5. What results were achieved by the USPS's changes?
6. What effect does the increased use of e-mail have on postal productivity?
7. How does the use of standard shipping containers and flat-rate mailers help competitiveness?
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is the largest postal service in the world, handling about 41 percent (630 million pieces a day) of the world's mail volume. The second largest is Japan's, which handles only about 6 percent of the world's mail. The USPS is huge by any standard. It employs over 760,000 workers, making it the largest civilian employer in the United States. It has over 300,000 mail collection boxes, 38,000 post offices, 130 million mail delivery points, more than 300 processing plants to sort and ship mail, and more than 75,000 pieces of mail processing equipment. It handles over 100 billion pieces of first-class mail a year, and ships about 3 billion pounds of mail on commercial airline flights, making it the airlines' largest shipper.