The USPS has post offices in some very small towns that are a big drain on their costs. There is no way a profit based business would run those offices that lose so much money. They would run into political pressure if they closed those post offices.
Yeah, a business that was only bent on maximizing profit would not service unprofitable areas by definition.
A totally private power company would not run power out into the boonies. Neither would a private road company. Or a water company. And probably some other stuff I am forgetting. At the very least their cost/fee structure would probably be different than it currently is.
The USPS is tasked with providing basic services to ALL people, just like those other services are. While the USPS might be a bit too accomodating to people living in the middle of nowhere, they are required to provide some level of service.
I don’t happen to know the overall financial status of Canada Post, but one thing they did to save money and to provide better service in rural areas was to allow franchises (I think that’s the right term?). There are Canada Post offices in pharmacies and even grocery stores in some places, which means they don’t have to upkeep a building on their own, and pretty much every town has a pharmacy and/or grocery store. All the post offices in Montreal that I can think of are located in pharmacies or dépanneurs; it’s my first assumption when I need to mail something or to get stamps.
Has something like this been done in some parts of the US? Is there any talk of doing this, if not?
And I hope this isn’t too much of a hijack, but I was just wondering whether there are community mail boxesin the US? These are becoming increasingly common in Canada; rather than door-to-door mail delivery, mail is delivered to a neighbourhood group of mailboxes. There is a shared larger box for packages; if you have a package in there, the mail carrier puts the key into your regular box and you can just put the key back in the outgoing mail slot afterwards. Larger items than that get flagged for pickup at the nearest post office. Although they can be a pain to get to in the winter when the snow hasn’t been cleared yet, IMHO these types of mail boxes aren’t that much of an inconvenience.
The US does have some post offices that are part of a store. But I have not seen many of those. Maybe it’s more common in other states.
In big apartment complexes now they usually have just 1 big mailbox area instead of a box at every unit. That does save time for the post office. Everybody gets their own box in that 1 spot.
Yes we have this. There is a branch in our local Hallmark store. It doesn’t do everything, but it does accept packages and sell stamps, etc. This isn’t a small town, and this office is just a mile or two away from the main post office, but it is a convenient location.