Residential Delivery Cold-Shouldered by USPS Rivals

THIS PAST holiday season more people made gift purchases over the Internet than ever before, bringing package deliverers record volumes of new business.

According to Internet industry analysts Zona Research Inc., the No. 1 beneficiary was United Parcel Service, which captured 55% of the online package delivery market during the holidays. It was followed by Federal Express, with 32%, and the U.S. Postal Service, with a much more modest 10%.

That’s right. UPS delivered five times as many online-initiated packages and FedEx three times as many as the postal service.

Judging, however, by UPS’ weeping over House postal subcommittee chairman John McHugh’s Postal Modernization Act of 1999-legislation that aims to ensure survival of a universal mail delivery system-you would think UPS and its brethren were losing business to the USPS.

Hardly. Instead, the postal service’s competitors don’t seem to care much about residential delivery.

In a recent MSNBC news story, a FedEx spokesman was quoted as saying his company “isn’t focused on lower-value goods that aren’t time-definite.” Airborne Express, meanwhile, “dumped several online and catalog customers” because, as an Airborne rep put it, the firm has “been more selective about the business” it carries. And even though UPS affirms an interest in residential delivery, its pricing of these services displays a preference for the more lucrative B-to-B market.

Mailers argue that if the USPS were to eliminate parcel post, as UPS ardently desires, prices for residential parcel deliveries would soar.

How is it that those so seemingly intent on undermining the postal service’s fiscal integrity show no interest in filling the void in universal delivery that would result if the USPS went under?

UPS and its cohorts whine about the need for a level playing field. Maybe the best way to do that is to require every postal services firm to pick up its share of the obligation.