Excerpted from the February 4, 2019 Issue of Mailers Hub News

It’s common knowledge in the postal community that the Postal Service’s fleet of about 140,000 “long-life vehicles” has more than outlived its name. Originally meant to last 24 years (but later extended to 30 years), the ubiquitous LLV is used by city and rural carriers nationwide. Out of production since 1994, the oldest trucks in the fleet are now 31 years old, but the anticipated replacement vehicles, expected to cost about $6 billion in all, have yet to be chosen.

As previously reported, the Postal Service submitted its Annual Compliance Review for fiscal 2018 to the Postal Regulatory Commission at the end of December. Given the span and scope of such a document, it’s normal for the PRC staff to pore over it carefully and ask about data or statements that they believe need further clarification. These questions, officially know as “Chairman’s Information Requests,” or CHIRs, generate a response by the USPS.

The occasional nugget

Competitive Products: A Final Rule is Only Half the Story

Commentary excerpted from the Jan. 7, 2019 issue of Mailers Hub News

In an order issued January 3, the Postal Regulatory Commission published its final rule regarding the institutional cost requirement for Postal Service competitive products. The 197-page order concludes a rulemaking that had begun in November 2016.

Commentary from the November 12, 2018 edition of Mailers Hub News

If – as is far from likely – any legislative attention is given the Postal Service over the next two years, how that attention will be manifest will be shaped by the very different attitudes of the political parties who will be in control of Congress over that period. (That difference likely will mean that, given the parties’ inability to compromise, nothing will be achieved, but that discussion is for another day.)