[maples37]

American perspective, but how about running them like the USPS?

I don't know the intricacies, but from what I've gathered, the USPS is operated by the government and intended to teeter right around the line of self-sustainability. They're required to provide service to "hard-to-scale" regions, like the middle-of-nowhere rural towns in Montana, without charging them an arm and a leg. This works, because their primary directive is not to "make stock go up", but rather to "get the job done and the mail delivered".