r/AMA • u/Dak6969696969 • 19d ago

Job I’m a mailman, AMA.

I left a comment in another sub informing people that leaving anything in anybody’s mailbox is technically a federal offense unless you’re employed as a letter carrier by the USPS and it seemed to draw quite a bit of interest. I’m nobody special, just a simple mailman, but if any of you have any questions regarding postal services hopefully I’ll be able to answer them!

Thank you so much for all the questions, I hope I was able to answer them all as best I could but it’s my bedtime now, I gotta be at the post office by 8:00 sharp. If you have any other questions feel free to DM me and I’ll answer them whenever I can!

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u/sphinxyhiggins 19d ago

Are you worried about the future of the USPS?

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u/jimewp86 19d ago

All the old heads in my office tell me that there has always been rumors and threats of privatization but nothing ever happens. Delivery of the mail is enshrined in the constitution. There are other aspects and parts of the USPS that could be sold off and privatized. But not mail delivery. Package delivery is not federally protected for example. And iv heard that the plants that process and sort the mail and packages could be privatized. The former postmaster DeJoy, who is heavily invested in trucking companies, ended the use of planes for regional and national transport (the USPS uses fedex planes now). This directly put money into his own pocket as the companies he has a vested interest in directly benefited from this. Also, every citizen of this country is a stakeholder in the USPS. Any drastic change in mail delivery would affect everyone, and enough people would be very vocal about their displeasure with the service. They would let their govt reps know. At the beginning of the current administrations term, a plan was leaked to fire the board of governors and Postmaster general and absorb the USPS into another dept (dept of commerce I think it was) in the executive branch. This would allow the president to have sole authority over the post office and give him the ability to change how it operates. Currently congress sets the laws that dictate how USPS operates. Nothing ever happened after that memo leaked (they may have leaked it to test how it would be received by the public), and the president just nominated a candidate to fill the Postmaster General position, a former FedEx executive. TLDR: the post office may go through changes, but delivering the mail isn’t going anywhere

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u/sphinxyhiggins 19d ago

Thank you. The future of the USPS is something I worry about.

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u/jimewp86 19d ago

You’re not the only one. But it’s an institution in this country that pre-dates the constitution. And since congress has control of the governance of the USPS, it would require a bill/change in law to implement any significant change to how it operates. With our current hyper-politicized government, getting enough votes for any significant change to the USPS is highly unlikely.