La Jolla Cove Attractions - What Business Gets More Customers Every Year But Keeps Losing Money?

Source - http://www.washingtonpost.com/
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Category - La Jolla Cove Attractions
Posted By - San Diego Hampton Inn

La Jolla Cove Attractions

WASHINGTON — What business gets more customers every year, yet keeps losing money?

The U.S. Postal Service delivers mail to 11 million more homes, offices and other addresses than it did a decade ago, even as the amount of mail that people in the United States receive has dropped sharply.

That combination may be financially dicey, some analysts say.
“The more delivery points they have to service, the higher their costs” in fuel, time spent, etc., says Rick Geddes, associate professor in Cornell University’s department of policy analysis and management.
“But it doesn’t mean their revenue goes up — it doesn’t necessarily mean people are mailing more stuff,” he says.
Indeed, the volume of mail has decreased steadily as people stay in touch with email, Facebook and other electronic services more. Total mail volume handled by the financially shaky postal agency dropped to 160 billion pieces last year from its all-time high, 213.1 billion in 2006. Revenue fell to $65.2 billion last budget year from a high of $74.9 billion in 2008.
The cost of delivery is the agency’s largest fixed expense. It takes tens of billions of dollars a year and 300,000 people, or 60 percent of the agency’s workforce, to handle deliveries, says Postal Service spokeswoman Sue Brennan.
The service isn’t losing money on delivery, but adding addresses while losing volume is an issue, she says.
“In 2007, we could deliver 10 or 15 pieces of mail to a house and we were making a lot of money just because the volume was so high,” Brennan says.
Those times have ended, but the mail carrier is still required to go to every address, six days a week, whether taking 15 pieces there or one.
The number of new addresses had been rising by roughly 2 million almost every year since 1989, but was cut in half to 1 million or less annually during the recession and housing crisis this decade.
With the economy improving, the constant march upward in the number of places the postman has to travel is expected to accelerate. The Commerce Department reported last week that spending on home construction rose in February to the highest level in more than four years and also was up for office construction and health care facilities.
Some analysts see more addresses as an opportunity for the Postal Service as long as the agency can adjust to changing times and demand.
Scott Van Derven, a letter carrier of 30 years, says he expects to see a couple thousand new delivery points on his downtown Milwaukee route in the next year. Projects that stalled when the housing bubble burst are starting to go forward now — new buildings will go up and old industrial ones will be turned into apartments or other housing he believes will draw young professionals.
Van Derven envisions bringing them mail sacks full of professional magazines and catalogues from home furnishing stores as they decorate their new homes. And he predicts more packages in his future — lots of packages, which are the Postal Service’s fastest growing business because more people are buying things online.