Postal Service Revolution Deserves Time to Deliver
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s ambitious plan to compete with FedEx and UPS can work if entrenched interests let it.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy knows logistics.
Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
The general public’s direct interaction with the US Postal Service has been declining for decades now. How many young people have mailed a letter or picked up a package at the post office? We send emails. We pay bills online. If we need to ship a physical document, we hand it to FedEx Corp. or United Parcel Service Inc.
That long decline of regular post office connection obscures the fact that consumers increasingly depend on this 249-year-old federal agency as a pillar of the economy. The Postal Service is the backbone of e-commerce, delivering more packages across the US than all couriers, including Amazon.com Inc.