[chernevik]

Wages, staffing and work rules are huge problems. I strongly suspect that the USPS falls very, very far short of UPS and Fedex on almost any productivity measurement. Because it is politically impossible to take on the postal unions.

Universal delivery is a very important service, but it probably ought to be directly subsidized by Congress. Because the current system of subsidy through monopoly gave a false sense of security in their revenues. Now technology is killing those revenues, and the system is trying to avoid job losses by service reductions. The logical end of that spiral is obvious.

[rdl]

UPS is union, actually, and not horrible. I think some of the elements of FedEx are as well (FedEx Ground is basically RPS via an acquisition, and their employees have universally sucked in my experience, but they're not union -- there's a push to unionize. I do believe FedEx pilots and maybe some other parts of the air operations are union.)

I don't think USPS is that inefficient for some of its operations.

FedEx (Air/Express) is the gold standard for premium delivery.

[chernevik]

But UPS isn't run by political appointees, has an equity return objective, and is disciplined by market forces without a monopoly protection.