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Mailbox Explodes in Northeast DC
Updated: Thursday, 13 Aug 2009, 11:43 PM EDT
Published : Thursday, 13 Aug 2009, 11:43 PM EDT
By MYFOXDC STAFF/myfoxdc
WASHINGTON, D.C. – D.C. fire crews say a mailbox explosion shut down several streets and forced evacuations in Northeast Washington on Thursday night.
It happened at 49th Street NE and Meade Street NE just before 10 p.m. Officials say a blue U.S. Postal Service mailbox was destroyed by an explosive device.
D.C. Fire and EMS had to close off several streets in the area, and they were checking to see if there was a second device. There were no injuries reported.
Witnesses said debris was scattered over a large area after the explosion.
Postal Service health is still a concern
By Juliana Gruenwald CongressDaily July 30, 2009 While there is little disagreement that the U.S. Postal Service is facing a severe financial crisis, lawmakers voiced concerns on Thursday over the proposed solutions, which include closing some branches and possibly reducing deliveries to five days a week.
GAO this week said it was adding the Postal Service to its list of “high-risk areas” needing attention by Congress.
It said the USPS is facing a “deteriorating financial situation” and is on track to end the year with a net loss of $7 billion. Its financial woes are due to the ailing economy and declining mail volumes as more people and businesses bypass snail mail for e-mail, text messaging and other forms of electronic communications.
At a House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee hearing, lawmakers pressed the USPS for details on what criteria would be used in determining which of the proposed 3,200 suburban and urban branches under consideration would be closed.
USPS acting Vice President Jordan Small said fewer than 1,000 post offices out of the list of 3,200 are likely to be closed. The criteria USPS will use in determining whether to close a facility is a branch’s proximity to other branches and the consuming habits of postal customers in that area.
He declined to give an estimate of how much would be saved by the closures and by eliminating Saturday deliveries. Small said USPS would have a better sense of the estimated cost savings in October when a study on such moves is complete.
But some lawmakers voiced concern about the potential impacts on their communities. “While I admit, the finances here are very grave … there is a need to conduct ourselves with, I think, a thoughtful approach … and do it in a way that causes the least amount of disruption,” Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee Chairman Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said many of his constituents who have long commutes to work would be unable to visit a post office if they are not open in the evening.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., chastised the postal service for taking too long to implement the necessary reforms but then quizzed Small on whether any post offices in Washington are on the list of possible closures. For the most part, business groups dependent on the postal service said they support the proposed changes if they will help ensure USPS’s viability.
But they voiced strong opposition to raising postal rates. Noting that the bad economy has hurt their industry as well, “mailers cannot shoulder another rate increase,” the Direct Marketing Association’s Jerry Cerasale said. Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee ranking member Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said lawmakers should consider providing USPS with economic stimulus funds and urged USPS to do more to make itself more relevant, perhaps through assisting in conducting the 2010 census.
Postal Officials Ponder Emergency Rate Increases
From the Dead Tree EditionThursday, July 23, 2009
Postal officials are spreading the word that they may seek emergency rate increases next year.
Various scenarios have been bandied about, including one that would raise the price of the 44-cent First Class stamp to 50 cents and other rates by similar amounts. But after several meetings with postal officials, the Direct Marketing Association is telling some members that the Postal Service is more likely to seek an “exigent increase” of only 2% to 3%, including only one cent for the First Class stamp, to help shrink its multi-billion-dollar losses.
Annual increases in most postage rates are generally capped by changes in inflation. Postal officials are realizing that deflation, especially the drop in energy prices since last summer, will probably mean no such rate increases next year, according to accounts coming out of meetings with postal officials. As Dead Tree Edition pointed out recently, USPS will not be able to institute normal rate increases in May 2011 unless the Consumer Price Index rises at an annualized rate of nearly 5% for the rest of this year.
That’s why postal officials are pondering an unprecedented “exigency-based” rate adjustment, which postal regulations allow “only when justified by exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.” Postal Regulatory Commission rules would also require USPS to discuss the circumstances leading to the proposed increases and “whether the circumstances were foreseeable or could have been avoided by reasonable prior action.”
The PRC would hold a public hearing on an exigent rate request and by law would have 90 days to decide whether “such adjustment is reasonable and equitable and necessary to enable the Postal Service, under best practices of honest, efficient, and economical management, to maintain” appropriate service levels.
The Postal Service, which is supposed to break even, is projecting a loss of about $6 billion this fiscal year. To close that gap, which USPS says will grow unless it takes drastic action, postal officials are also discussing plans with mailer groups and postal unions to transition to five-day delivery in the fiscal year that starts in October 2010. That would require Congressional approval.
The closing of thousands of post offices is a possibility, the consolidation of processing and distribution centers has recently accelerated, and USPS continues to shrink its workforce — all in response to declining mail volume that is causing the budget shortfall.
The meetings have also been an attempt by postal officials to shore up union and customer support for legislation that would reduce USPS’ unusually high pre-payments for retiree health care. The Congressional Budget Office estimates H.R. 22 would save USPS about $2.5 billion annually for the next three years.
Lousy economy has a bright side: Less junk mail
Editor’s note: As a direct marketer, you should see this drop in direct mail as a tremendous opportunity to get your message out there in a less cluttered environment!
By Christine Show
From the Orlando Sentinel
July 22, 2009
Sherry Batts used to sort through stacks and stacks of unsolicited mail, from credit-card offers to requests from charities.
But Batts, as a member of a nonprofit group that runs a tiny post office in the small south Lake County community of Ferndale, has noticed a sharp decline in such mailings.
“That kind of stuff I hardly get anymore,” she said. “There’s just not as much junk mail as there used to be.”
Credit-card mail, which spiked in 2006 to 8.3 billion pieces in the U.S., dropped nearly 35percent in 2008 to 5.4 billion pieces, according to Mintel Comperemedia, a Chicago firm that tracks the direct-mail industry. Direct-mail companies — which used to send unsolicited mail to virtually anyone — are now targeting specific customers to cut back on expenses in this difficult economy.
In a reflection of the struggling housing market, mortgage companies also have slashed mailings. Mortgage companies using traditional mail sent 203 million pieces in 2008, down 75 percent from 800 million pieces at the height of the housing boom in 2005.
“It’s fallen dramatically,” said Stephen Clifford, Mintel Comperemedia vice president of financial services.
These businesses have to rethink how they spend on the services to avoid taking big risks, Clifford said.
“There’s definitely a lot less direct mail than there was even a year ago or even six months ago,” Clifford said. “They’re being much more particular and selective of who they’re offering mail to.”
Companies want the most specific information they can get on potential customers — for example, whether someone has children, a swimming pool, a pet or certain ailments, said Ken Lombardi, owner of Action Mail Services in Orlando.
Such pinpointing is essential, agreed Jack Curtin of Tribune Direct, a direct-mail marketing company owned by Tribune Co., whose media holdings include the Orlando Sentinel.
“We lead with data to help them [clients] to understand who their best prospects are and target those prospects,” Curtin said.
Postal Service concerned
The industry’s changes have hurt the U.S. Postal Service, one of the largest avenues for direct-mail companies to reach customers. The Postal Service doesn’t record drops in direct mail but is aware of the situation nationwide, said Elaine Pancake, spokeswoman for Orlando-area post offices.
“It affects us in that we have a lower mail volume,” Pancake said. “There’s a concern.”
The Postal Service already is struggling with large deficits, including a potential $6.5 billion loss this year.
Besides declining advertising budgets, the Internet is playing a role in the dwindling direct-mail volume.
Marketing companies now have more options on how they can get the word out, including e-mail, text messages and Web sites to target specific audiences.
“Communication is more effective if you can do it over more than one channel,” Curtin said.
Low point?
One bright spot for direct mail may be banks. Hit hard by failed mortgages and foreclosures, they are pushing to increase new checking accounts, Clifford said.
So far in 2009, bank mail about checking accounts has reached its highest level since 2005 with 226 million pieces of mail, according to Mintel Comperemedia data.
“Despite the challenges banks are experiencing in this recession with mortgage losses, they are continuing to market checking accounts and savings accounts,” Clifford said. “They are looking for more deposits in order to keep sustaining their loan business.”
But Clifford said it’s too early to tell when and if the decline in the direct-mail industry will pick up again.
But as the industry continues to reinvent itself and recovers from economic turmoil, the numbers of direct mail may increase.
“Perhaps we reached the low point,” Clifford said. “It’s definitely anyone’s guess at this point.”
Advertising Will Change Forever
From Advertising Age July 20, 2009
By Josh Bernoff
Digital Spending Will Nearly Double in 5 Years, But Ad Budgets Won’t
Here’s one of the things we do at Forrester Research: we interview as many marketers as we can about their plans, identify trends and project future likely conditions, and then we put together some numbers to make a projection. If you’ve ever seen a Forrester projection, it comes from a process like this.
This means that inside every projection is an idea or ten about the future. Those ideas can be powerful, and they come from research with marketers and consumers.
My colleague at Forrester, Shar Van Boskirk, just published our five-year interactive marketing forecast. The idea inside it is the real kicker.
In this recession, marketers have learned that interactive marketing is more effective, and advertising less effective, per dollar spent. While budgets for online have decreased, they decreased less than other budgets. Six out of ten marketers we surveyed agreed with the statement “we will increase budget for interactive by shifting money away from traditional marketing.” Only 7% said “we have no plans to increase our marketing budget.”
Unlike the last recession, digital marketing is no longer experimental. Now it looks more like advertising is inefficient, relative to digital. More than half of the marketers we surveyed said that effectiveness of direct mail, TV, magazines, outdoor, newspapers, and radio would stay the same or decrease within three years. In contrast, well over 70% expected the effectiveness of channels like created social media, online video, and mobile marketing to increase.
The result is that digital, which will be about 12% of overall advertising spend in 2009, is likely to grow to about 21% in five years. Along the way overall advertising budgets won’t grow much.
This is huge.
It means we are all digital marketers now, since digital is at the center of many campaigns anyway.
It means media is in trouble, or at least in the middle of a transformation. For example, online video ads, which will be about $870 million this year, will grow to over $3 billion in 2014. What will this do to networks plans to put more of their shows online in places like Hulu. How will it accelerate some newspapers plans to become more and more centered around online?
And it means that social “media,” which will account for $716 million this year between social network campaigns and agency fees, will generate $3 billion in five years. And this doesn’t even count displays ads on social networks (which are in the display ads category.) Of all the parts of digital marketing, social network marketing one is poised for the most explosive growth.
Pundits have been declaring the end of mass media and advertising for years now. From my 14 years of experience analyzing this stuff, I’ve learned that things die very slowly, but there are real trends you can see. If you’re in advertising, you’d better learn to speak digital, because that’s the way the world is going.
FedEx (FDX) Comments On 2010; Sees Continued Softness in Demand and Flat Shipping Volumes in 1st Half
From the StreetInsider.com
July 15, 2009 3:37 PM EDT
In its 10-K, FedEx (NYSE: FDX) gives some guidance for 2010. The company sees continued softness in demand and flat shipping volumes in 1st half of 2010. Sees 2010 revenues hurt by lower yields. Sees 2010 earnings hurt by lower revenues. Sees 2010 Capex of $2.6B.
FedEx’s Comments on its Outlook for 2010 in 10-k:
We expect continued softness in demand for our services in 2010, as shipping volumes are expected to remain relatively flat as the global recession persists, particularly in the first half of 2010. Our results for the first half of 2009 included the benefit of significantly stronger economic activity and rapidly declining fuel costs, creating difficult year-over-year comparisons. The timing and pace of any economic recovery is difficult to predict, and our outlook for 2010 reflects our expectations for continued challenges in growing volume and yield in this environment. Revenues in 2010 are expected to be negatively impacted by lower yields resulting from lower fuel surcharges due to more stable fuel prices and an aggressive pricing environment for our services. We anticipate volume growth at the FedEx Ground segment due to continued market share gains and flat volumes at the FedEx Express segment for 2010. Further, we expect LTL shipments to decrease for 2010 due to the continued excess capacity in this market. However, if excess capacity exits the LTL industry in 2010, we have the network, resources and capabilities to manage any resulting incremental volumes. Despite the benefit of numerous cost-reduction activities in 2009 (described above), earnings in 2010 will be negatively impacted by lower revenues as a result of the yield and volume pressures described above. If economic conditions deteriorate further, additional actions will be necessary to reduce the size of our networks. However, we will not compromise our outstanding service levels or take actions that negatively impact the customer experience in exchange for short-term cost reductions.
Few Bright Spots In Media Sales Forecast: Magna
From DIRECT: Jul 14, 2009 1:23 AM
Media supplier advertising revenue will sink to $161.4 billion in 2009, according to media services firm Magna. That figure represents a 14.5% drop from 2008’s level. And there isn’t much hope for recovery during the next few years: Magna anticipates the compounded annual ad revenue growth rate between 2009 and 2014 to be only 0.9%.
At least that represents growth. Radio ad revenue has dropped of late, dipping to $14 billion in 2009. And the next five year’s won’t be fun, either, with radio ad revenue slipping by 0.8% a year.
And at $15.7 billion, magazine spending has plummeted, and there isn’t much hope for turnaround. Its declines will continue through 2014, on a compounded annual basis of 3.3% every year.
Move from slick paper to pulp, and the future looks bleaker. Total ad sales for newspapers – including online revenue – will amount to $28.5 billion, and that number is going to drop by 3.7% annually through 2014.
What good news there is, is tepid. For instance, total television consumption is set to rise, as population increases and viewing will outstrip embracement of digital video recorders. Total television spending, which stands at an estimated $47.7 billion for 2009, will rise by 3.2% during the next five years.
And while the rate of broadband computer penetration is slowing, it is still rising and should it 70% by 2014. At that time, most computer access will be broadband-based, Magna predicted.
Where is growth? No surprise there: Direct online media expenditures will amount to $13.9 billion in 2009, and will increase between this year and 2014 by 10.2% on a compounded annual basis.
Similarly, total online spend, which stands at $23 billion for 2009, will jump by 8.4% compounded annually through 2014.
The biggest surprise may be in Magna’s direct mail predictions. At $19.2 billion, supplier revenue is down 11.2% for the year. But – whether due to postage and printing increases, or a swing back of the pendulum as marketers re-embrace the mail – between now and 2014 it is seen as growing at 2% annually.
Feeling the Squeeze
By DAVE GATHMAN dgathman@scn1.com from The St Charles Sun
CAROL STREAM — It’s hard to sound hip and cutting-edge when your two biggest products go by the nicknames “snail mail” and “junk mail.”
Some things you never knew about the U.S. Postal Service:
• Share of all mail in the world handled by the United States: 46 percent
• Percentage of the Postal Service’s budget that comes from tax dollars: zero.
• The smallest American post office: is in Ochopee, Fla. It measures 8 feet 4 inches wide by 7 feet 3 inches deep.
• Bring your passport to apply for your passport: The post office in Point Roberts, Wash., can’t be reached by car or on foot without going through part of Canada.
• If it were a private company, the Postal Service would rank 26th in annual sales on the Fortune 500. If it were broken up into three private businesses based on the kind of mail carried, the First Class Mail Co. would rank 61st in income, the Advertising Mail Corp. would rank 119th and Shipping Services Inc. would rank 310th.
• A rural route delivery car is a “post office on wheels,” able to sell stamps and receive incoming mail as he or she drives along.
• You can recycle used cell phones, PDAs and ink cartridges using mail-back envelopes available at local post offices.
• USPS has the world’s largest civilian fleet of vehicles and the nation’s largest network of retail outlets.
Source: U.S. Postal Service press releases and www.usps.com.
Americans receive more and more of their bills online and even pay them that way — instantly, and without a 44-cent stamp.
They send love letters via e-mail. Or heck, why not just Tweet or text one’s devotion?
Even greeting cards are starting to be replaced, though in a only a minor way so far, by purchased-online “e-cards.”
Add in a recession that has cut down on advertising mail and the decline of magazine subscriptions, and you get a painful squeeze on the postal service.
The neighborhood mailman is not about to go out of business. But the amount of mailing (and postage income) is plummeting. The service is losing money by the bucketful. Work forces are being cut, everything from stamp sales to letter sorting is being mechanized, up to a tenth of the nation’s post offices could be closed this year, and Saturday delivery could become a thing of the past.
Zapped further by the recession, the service reported recently that in the Jan. 1-March 31 quarter, it had a net loss of $1.9 billion nationwide. People sent 14.7 percent fewer pieces of mail in that quarter than in the same quarter a year ago.
Next time you complain about that 2-cent raise in the price of a stamp, realize that the postal service spent more money than it took in during 10 of the past 11 quarters.
“We have seen an unprecedented decline in mail volumes and revenue that continued to accelerate during the second quarter,” Postmaster General John Potter said in May.
Cuts being made
Ratliff said the service is fighting back by cutting its work force and work hours, mainly by offering early-retirement deals and not replacing employees who leave. By year’s end, the service expects to reduce its number of paid work hours by the equivalent of 57,000 full-time workers.
Though it still employs 650,000 career employees (down from a high of 800,000 a decade ago), more and more workers are being replaced by machines, such as the address-reading sorters at the Carol Stream processing center that can go through 36,000 pieces of mail an hour instead of the 1,000 that used to be sorted by a human clerk at the Elgin post office. Businesses get a discount on postage for sorting their ads or bills before they even get to the post office.
With 1,400 workers, the Carol Stream distribution center that sorts mail from the northern Fox Valley and the Hampshire-Burlington area is huge. But in 1992, it had 3,000 employees.
Recognizing that, as Ratliff puts it, “We have more facilities than we have mail,” the service also announced last month that it is thinking about closing 3,200 of the nation’s 34,000 post offices. Most of those are metropolitan branches or stations, according to an article in MSN Money. And in March, the postmaster general asked Congress for the right to stop delivering on Saturday.
True, some trends are heading in the mailman’s favor. One reason newspapers, magazines and local radio stations are in a sorry state is that advertisers who want to reach an entire town’s population increasingly have moved to direct-mail ad campaigns. But the recession has hit this field as well, and the genre’s nickname of “junk mail” reminds that it is especially easy for a recipient of such ads to dodge them.
Shoppers are doing more and more buying online instead of down at the corner mall. And once they order something from eBay or amazon.com, it has to be shipped to them somehow. “You can’t send packages electronically,” Ratliff notes.
Delivery competition
But lots of that growing parcel business is being grabbed by private competitors like FedEx, UPS and DHL. And the recession is cutting into sales online as well as in stores.
To fight back, Ratliff said, “We are trying to make it easier to mail packages, with new products like the Flat Rate Priority Mail Box. Anything that can fit into that box, you can send for one low rate. That has become very popular with eBayers.”
The service’s Web site, www.usps.com, has gotten into the interactive age by providing ways for someone to design their own greeting cards or even print up postage stamps bearing the face of their high school graduate.
Still, Americans depend on and perhaps even love their mail system like no other people on Earth. The United States accounts for 46 percent — practically half — of all mail sent anywhere in the world, even though our country has just 5 percent of the world’s people. No. 2 in the world, Japan, accounts for just 7 percent of the sent mail.
“Even though mail volume has gone down, mail will always be an important part of American life,” Ratliff believes. “It’s become such an important part of the economy. We will adapt and respond to the changing world.”
Mail Truck full of undelivered mail towed from McDonalds parking lot!
You’ve gotta check this out!!!
Mail Delivery Van full of mail towed
Does Federal Law Limit Post Office Consolidation?
From the Dead Tree Edition Monday, July 6, 2009
The laws of economics say the U.S. Postal Service needs to reduce the number of post offices. But the laws of the United States may say otherwise.
As USPS embarks on a study to determine which of approximately 3,000 large post offices can be eliminated, it is seeking the Postal Regulatory Commission’s blessing on the legality of its efforts.
The Postal Service is concerned about running afoul of the law requiring it to “maintain[s] postal facilities of such character and in such locations, that postal patrons throughout the Nation will, consistent with reasonable economies of postal operations, have ready access to essential postal services.†It asked the PRC late Thursday to rule that consolidation of some of the large “stations and branches” (which are mostly in urban and suburban locations) does not violate that clause.
Mail volume is declining, and more than 30% of USPS’s retail revenue comes from sources other than transactions at retail post offices, according to the filing. “Yet the vast majority of existing Post Offices, stations and branches were established before the advent of the Internet and other convenient alternative access channels that have proven so popular,”the filing states.
“In many cases, the justification for the establishment of a station or branch at a particular location 20 or 40 or more years ago no longer exists,” the USPS request says. “Postal retail stations and branches are not intended to operate as monuments to a bygone era of postal customer interaction.”
The study will examine “the feasibility of moving retail units and carrier operations into smaller facilities, as well as the consolidation of both retail and delivery from one location into other nearby retail and delivery units,” says Alice M. Vangorder, who heads Customer Service Operations for USPS, in testimony submitted along with the Postal Service’s motion. “It is
impossible to predict how many stations and branches ultimately will be subjected to discontinuance.”
Though stamp purchases are still the most common type of retail transaction at post offices, she notes that people can buy stamps at nearly 50,000 supermarkets and other private businesses.
The study is just the first step in the Postal Service’s plan to conduct “an in-depth examination and reconfiguration of its [entire] retail network,” which consists of more than 36,000 locations.
As usual, these efforts to follow the Congressional mandate that USPS break even financially are likely to run into “Not in my district” complaints of various members of Congress.
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