[TimBurr]

On a quick and dirty look, I don't think those figures are right. Here's what I found for 2020:

USPS 2020

  Revenues & Expenses
  Package revenue:  $28,537M
  Overall revenue:  $73,123M
  Overall expenses: $82,309M
  Net profit:      -$ 9,176M

  Mail volume - pieces per year
  Packages:         ~6.4B
  Marketing mail:   ~75B
  First class mail: ~54B
  

The press release listed all volumes as changes and percents - I've made a quick effort to back out approximate total volumes. Data from https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/1113-...

Fedex

  Revenues & Expenses
  Package revenue:  Unknown
  Overall revenue:  $69,217M
  Net profit:       $ 1,286M

  Mail volume - pieces per year
  Packages:         ~4.6B
  Marketing mail:   N/A
  First class mail: N/A

Packages are presented per day, but only count operating days (255/yr) The source I found split expenses up into cost of goods sold/SG&A/other/operating. I'm not clear what each one means and don't want to misrepresent - try the link! Data from https://www.fedex.com/en-us/about/company-structure.html and https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/FDX/fedex/financia...

So USPS carries more packages, as well as insane volumes of mail that UPS/FedEx won't. Despite the significant volume differences, expenses are within 20% between the companies.

[nickthemagicman]

Thank you for looking into this!

That was very informative!

I'm going to look a little deeper into it but that makes me feel better about the efficiency of the post office now.

[JPKab]

This was an excellent and informative post. The USPS really gets hosed by the fact that they are required to have a fixed price for the most rural, low-density locations that UPS and FedEx would never deliver to.