Why Mail Matters: Newegg

Newegg, one of the largest sellers of computer and electronic parts and products is a Postal Service customer.  How do I know?  I just purchased some memory for my laptop and just got the notice that the shipment is on its way.    Here is the e-mail message, minus information describing the purchase.


Dear Alan M Robinson,


Thank you for shopping at Newegg.com. We're glad we had what you're looking for!

Your tracking number has been generated via Egg Saver. Please see below for your order information and tracking number. It may take up to 1 business day for your tracking information to become available.

Egg Saver shipments are picked up from our warehouse at the close of each business day by DHL Global Mail, who handles shipping from Newegg to your nearest USPS facility. USPS then delivers the package to your ship-to address with your regular mail delivery within 4-7 business days. [Words are bold in the original email.]

Now, the graphic is nice but isn't it a bit too complicated for Newegg customers who don't know what a DDU, SCF, BMC, or an AMF are?   But it does make it clear that the shipment will arrive in the mail after being transported much of the way by DHL. (DHL should develop a new graphic for inclusion in e-mails like this designed for non-mailing industry customers of Newegg.)
 
The description of the service clearly illustrates a marketing and operations problem that the Postal Service has to fix if it wants to take a larger share of the Newegg's delivery business.   Doesn't the sentence, "USPS then delivers the package to your ship-to address with your regular mail delivery within 4-7 business days," encourage customers to pay to upgrade to faster service the next time they make an order?  Doesn't this sentence make signing up for either Amazon Prime or Shoprunner to get 2-day service at no charge if one shops online frequently?
 
Even with much slower service commitments, the Postal Service has been able to grow its last mile delivery business. In the First quarter of FY 2011 parcel select volume was up 26%, allowing its first-mile partners to cost-effectively drop shipments nearer to the delivery point. 
 
The Postal Service's last mile, parcel delivery service could grow faster if it had tighter delivery standards so DHL would no longer say the "USPS then delivers the package to your ship-to address with your regular mail delivery within 4-7 business days."  For example, the USPS needs to find a way to deliver shipments dropped at a DDU or SCF the next delivery day, and shipments dropped at a National Distribution Center (NDC) in two or three days.   Then its service would nearly service competitive with ground delivery offerings of FedEx and UPS to merchants trying to satisfy demanding customers, while still offering the low-cost delivery option that makes on-line purchases attractive.
 
 

Logistics Does Not End At The Dock

Here is a video from Great Britain showing the logistics inside of National Health Service Hospital.   Obviously internal logistics, including inventory management create real opportunities for companies like DHL, FedEx, TNT and United Parcel Service that handle logistics to the dock door.  You can see by looking at shirt logos that thos is a DHL contract operations.   So it is possible for DHL to handle the logistics from manufacturer to patient.  

Amazon: Avoiding the Post Office

In Rethinking the Parcel Market, I noted Amazon's effort to offer same day delivery and what that means for UPS, FedEx and the Postal Service in the United States. Today's Times Online reports that Amazon has launched "a secret search for bricks-and-mortar stores to support its rapidly growing website. It is understood to be scouring the country for high-profile sites."

According to the article, Amazon is not looking to open retail outlets where customers can buy goods that the store has in inventory. Instead, the stores will provide a delivery point for customers that order larger items that mail or truck delivery is inconvenient.

[Monday 12/7/2009 Amazon has subsequently denied the story. Given the success of Apple stores and Amazon's success in revolutionizing the retail supply chain, the idea that Amazon would add a brick and mortar option seems logical. The brick and mortar option clearly fits with Amazon's clear interest in reducing the time from order to delivery. The post was edited following its original posting to reflect why Amazon may have explored the possibility of retail even if it has for now rejected the available brick and mortar options.]

Amazon's move if completed would put it in direct competition with Argos, Tesco and John Lewis which all offer similar services. The Times reports that Argos' customers pick-up 18% of their Internet purchases in brick and mortar outlets rather than have the items delivered by parcel carrier or road transport. Argos will generate half of their television sales this Christmas via the combination of a purchase on the Internet and delivery to a brick and mortar outlet.

If Amazon goes ahead with a retail strategy, it should be able to haul items for pick-up to its "stores" using contract carriers dedicated to their retail network. Amazon's business case would most likely show that both customers prefer to pick-up their larger items at a retail outlet and the overall delivery costs, including the cost of operating retail outlets, is less than the cost of home delivery. Amazon could then decide to hold some inventory of fast moving items at retail outlets to further reduce costs and allow for same day pick-up of these items. For this strategy to be successful, the customer's experience in retail outlets has to be just as good as the experience on the website.

A retail initiative by Amazon's would be a direct assault on Royal Mail, DHL, UPS, TNT, FedEx and road transport companies that handle items that weigh over 75 pounds (34 kilo). The reported new initiative would also be a direct assault on retail outlets of Royal Mail and its competitors that could provide a similar service to replace the loss of sales as single-piece letter mail volume decline.

Amazon is unlikely to pursue a similar strategy in the United States. Pursuing this strategy in the United States could require Amazon to collect sales taxes on sales in those states where it opened retail outlets. Losing the sales tax advantage would eliminate a price advantage that Amazon has over Best Buy, Sears and other s that offer store pick-up of Internet sales. Given the peculiarity of U.S. tax law there is an opportunity for FedEx, UPS, and the Postal Service to work with Amazon to expand the hours of a limited set of their retail outlets to make them pick-up points for Amazon and other Internet retailers. Alternatives any of these competitors could follow the lead of the German and Danish Post Offices and open self-service lock-boxes for after hours parcel delivery.

The Courier, Express, and Postal Business and the Nobel Prize

The research that Oliver Williams completed that brought him the Nobel Prize in Economics highlight key issues in the transformation of the courier, express and postal (CEP) business over the past two decades. In its press release, the Nobel Committee stated that "Oliver Williamson has argued that markets and hierarchical organizations, such as firms, represent alternative governance structures which differ in their approaches to resolving conflicts of interest. The drawback of markets is that they often entail haggling and disagreement. The drawback of firms is that authority, which mitigates contention, can be abused. Competitive markets work relatively well because buyers and sellers can turn to other trading partners in case of dissent. But when market competition is limited, firms are better suited for conflict resolution than markets. A key prediction of Williamson's theory, which has also been supported empirically, is therefore that the propensity of economic agents to conduct their transactions inside the boundaries of a firm increases along with the relationship-specific features of their assets."

So what does that mean in plain English? More importantly, why am I writing about this award in a blog dedicated to the courier, express, and postal industry?

Simply, operators in this business have a choice as they try to provide service across a broad geographic area or across the range of transportation and communications needs of their customers within a firm rather than through contractual arrangements between regional or modal partners. With few exceptions, when faced with the choice of providing service with a partner through a contract or within the constructs of a corporate structure, operators in this business have chosen corporate structures. The expansions of Deutsche Post, FedEx, TNT, and United Parcel Service all followed this path.

These firms succeeded by out-competing national postal operators that had to offer international service through bi-lateral or multi-national contractual arrangements, many of which were negotiated through the Universal Postal Union. The key problem of these contractual arrangements were that the operator selling the international service could not truly tell the buyer how long it would take to get delivery because they could not control the end-to-end service. Nor could the originating operator offer a seamless track-and-trace service until many years after the global corporate operators had made them a requirement of international express and parcel delivery.

The choice of a corporate model reflects a choice on a less global scale as well. Efforts by La Poste (France) and Royal Mail to provide service throughout Europe illustrate attempts to create a corporate structure within the Europe for parcel delivery to replace the contractual service that involved each national postal operators. The Austrian Post has purchased a number of firms focused in Eastern Europe with a goal of creating a stronger regional delivery competitor. The recent decision to merge the post offices in Sweden and Denmark also illustrates the choice of a corporate rather than a contract model to provide service within the CEP markets that the two independent posts now operate. Finally, Purolator Courier, a Canada Post subsidiary, and Canada Post itself, have established a strong corporate presence to handle cross-border traffic. Purolator is using its presence in the cross-border market to begin a domestic United States service.

Now there are limits to the use of a corporate model in the CEP industry. Firms in the industry use both a corporate and contractual or franchise model to provide retail services. The cost of maintaining a stand-alone retail infrastructure that has different business challenges than the rest of the CEP business has driven many firms to switch from the corporate to the contract model for this part of the business.

The last area that may fall under the contract model is the pick-up and delivery services themselves. Here the question is whether it is better to manage the delivery process with employees or contractors. The local courier business has always used a contractor model reflecting the uncertainty of the traditional on-demand unscheduled delivery service that they offered. FedEx Ground has used that model since its founding as Roadway Package Express. The recent court cases, IRS rulings, and NLRB rulings illustrate the challenge of maintaining the delivery function as a contractual arrangement and still maintaining proper control over the delivery portion of the service. However, both FedEx and local couriers believe that the cost advantages of managing delivery with contract drivers rather than employees is worth creating the proper legal structures to both ensure a reasonable level of control while still maintaining the driver's contractor status.

The question of corporate vs. contract models will likely come up as Congress looks at potential business models for the Postal Service. The work of Oliver Williams suggests that use of contract model could work for the retail side of the business where a franchiser that does not live up to its end of the bargain could be replaced. His work also suggests that delivery contractors could work in those areas where control over the appearance and schedule of the deliverer was not an issue. This is precisely what the Postal Service does with box-route contractors that serve many rural areas.

More importantly, his work explains why breaking the Postal Service into regional franchises or separating the delivery from processing and collection processes make little sense. Once the separation occurred the various parts would still have to contract with each other to provide end-to-end service. There is no competitive market for large-scale sortation. The growth of UPS’s and FedEx’s use of Parcel Select suggests that the collection and sortation companies would still have to contract with a company running the existing delivery network. Mr. Williams research suggests that there would be significant coordination issues and contractual gamesmanship between the various parts of what is now a unified Postal Service. The experiences of Citi Mail in Sweden and TNT, DX and others in UK illustrate the preference of operators to offer end to end service and the coordination issues and contractual gamesmanship that exists in developing interline agreements when these firms have to contract with either a national postal operator or another independent operator. [One of the drivers behind mergers and territorial expansion of railroads and less-than-truckload trucking firms in the US was the failure of a regulated interline process to resolve contractual and service issues when one firm passedfreigt to the other]

Finally, his work suggests the mail business will see more consolidation and not less in the future. The current process in which multiple firms handle the process a taking a document from concept to delivery with each handoff handled via a contracted or regulated process, could soon involve fewer firms as the advantage of integrating more of these processes within a single firm becomes clear to firms on either ends of these processes merge.

Marketing the Packstation

Deutsche Post did not just have to fund the purchase and installation of pakstations and train employees how to place parcels in them for pick-up by customers and remove parcels for processing but it had to fund a sizable marketing campaign to convince the public to use them. The two videos illustrated that marketing a new process of sending or receiving parcels is not an inexpensive proposition.

This web delivered commericial illustrates the problem of not being home when the delivery happens.

This video of a song was most likely used in shorter bits in commercials on the web, television, and radio. Since the Pakstation was introduced sometime before 2007 with a second order of 1,500 placed that, I am willing to bet that almost as many Germans can sing the chorus as can sing McDonald's big Mac jingle.

Dominos

Given the challenges that everyone in the courier, express, and postal industry face, we all need to smile and laugh a bit to keep our sanity

In my research on the industry, I found a DHL commerical that did just that. I thought the readers of this blog would enjoy seeing it.

Should the Postal Service Close All Post Offices?

Note: This blog post contains my first attempt to include pictures and videos. If you are having trouble viewing the videos they are all on YouTube and can be found by searching DHL and either Packstation or paketbox. I would appreciate feedback on workarounds for readers behind corporate firewalls from the more technically minded to the problem that many are having viewing the videos. For those that cannot see the videos at work, multiple readers have indicated that the blog is readable through virtually all ISP's on home computers. Thank you for your understanding. I will remove this paragraph once a workaround is found.

The Postal Service created a major political storm by proposing to close less than 700 retail locations. In addition to forcing every member of Congress to deal with irate citizens and Postal employees, the Postal Service must go though a laborious regulatory and public outreach process to make a rather small tweak in its retail network.

Deutsche Post, the German post office has just proposed closing its remaining company owned post offices. Does this mean that there is no retail access to postal services? No, in fact Deutsche Post guarantees that every town with greater than 2,000 population have a postal retail facility and in urban areas, no customer would be more than 2 kilometers (1.24 miles) from a retail facility.

How does Deutsche Post do this?

1. Deutsche Post simplified its pricing structure for all letter and parcel products used by retail customers. The prices can be found on two Deutsche Post web pages.

Letters flats, and smaller light weight parcels

Parcels of any weight with size maximums beyond those set for parcels under 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) with certain size maximums

Deutsche Post's price list for shipments of parcels of any size contains only seven different prices for shipments within Germany and only 20 different prices for shipments anyplace in the world. (If you look at the website, Deutsche Post uses the word "paket" for parcel and "päckchen" for small parcel.) It does this by nearly eliminating a customer's need to weigh the parcel that they are shipping. If a customer does not have the weigh a parcel to get a precise weight, they do not need a retail facility to weigh and price the shipment.

For domestic cards, letters, flats, and flat shaped parcels up to 2" thick there are five total rate levels . Besides the single rate for cards, there are four other rates: standard letters, heavy letters, standard flats and thick/heavy flats. Letters over 2 ounces are priced within one of the two flat categories.

For domestic parcels, customers only need to know the parcel's dimensions and whether the parcel weighs less than one of four weight band maximums. (Most parcels are handled by the DHL subsidiary.)

* 2 kilo (4.4 pounds) and no larger than 23.6" x 11.8" x 5.9" (60cm x 30 cm x15cm)
* 10 kilo (22 pounds) and no larger than 47.2" x 23.6" x 23.6" (120mm x 60mm x 60"
* 20 Kil0 (44 pounds) and no larger than 47.2" x 23.6" x 23.6" (120mm x 60mm x 60"
* 31.5 kilo (69 pounds) and no larger than 47.2" x 23.6" x 23.6" (120mm x 60mm x 60

For international parcel shipments, Deutsche Post has a pricing structure with a similar simple structure that has a total of 18 possible rates. Small parcels (parcels whose dimensions are such that width+ height+ length <= 35.5 inches) have two rates depending on whether they are destined within the European Union (EU) or the rest of the world. Larger parcels have rates within four weight-based price bands that are determined by destination country. Countries are grouped into four categories: the EU; rest of Europe; Middle East; and North America; and the rest of the world. For each country group, the weight based limits within each price bands are:

* 5 kilo (11 pounds)

* 10 kilo (22 pounds)

* 20 kilo (44 pounds)

* 30 kilo (66 pounds)

2.Deutsche Post contracts out all of its retail operations to either its former subsidiary, PostBank, independent providers of mail services or independent sellers of postage. Eliminating the need for precise mail weight simplifies the sale of postage. The simplicity of the transaction allows even the smallest kiosks and convenience stores can sell postage without the need for sophisticated point-of-sale terminals or revenue protection efforts that would be required with a more complicated tariff. Retailers can sell postage with the same level of effort they employ to sell scratch-off lottery tickets. By simplifying the product sold, Deutsche Post also simplifies the record-keeping, and security challenges with ensuring that non-corporate outlets do not pay for the postage sold, using models that work for lottery tickets and consignment items.

to the extent that weighing is necessary, a customer can go to an outlet that has a clerk that weighs the parcel. That is the service that the PostBank outlets can provide. However, the simplified tariff would allow a customer to go to an outlet that only sells stamps to buy the appropriate postage and determine the weight by using a scale the outlet provides for customer use, do the weighing themselves at home, or even just guess the weight prior to purchasing postage. The simplicity of the tariff allow individuals with limited training to determine the Deutsche Post postage stamp that would be appropriate for their letter, flat or parcel.

3.Deutsche Post has a significant technology program for self-service acceptance and delivery of parcels. They have developed two devices: paketboxes that can only accept parcels and packstations that can accept or delivery parcels. A simplified parcel tariff, on-line postage, and independent sellers of postage are clearly critical for the technology program to work. Paketboxes are larger version of the postal drop box and can be used for items that have postage already applied. Pictures on the web indicate that they are located in places not much different than where UPS or FedEx may have their drop boxes in the United States.

The video of the paketbox shows how it is used

Packstations are automated, large parcel lockers that can both collect and deliver parcels. They can deliver parcels to customers that are either not at home when the carrier arrives or for those customers that prefer to use the automated facility. They are located either in stand alone locations like cluster boxes in the United States or within buildings.

The following video shows how the packstation is used to accept parcels. (The process starts at the 20 second mark.)

The following video, most likely created by eBay and Deutsche Post, illustrates not only the use of a paketbox to tender a parcel and a packstation to pick up the parcel but the entire sortation process for parcels. The use of the paketbox by a customer and a Deutsche Post employee can be seen around 40 seconds from the beginning and the use of of the packstation can be seen at the 8 minute mark. All filming appear to have been done at PostBank or DHL facilities.




Could this be duplicated in the United States? Absolutely, but traditional thinking, regulatory processes and financial impediments prevent the Postal Service from doing so.

Traditional thinking prevents the simplification of the mail prices for retail customers to the extent that Deutsche Post has. The traditional approach to postal costing is to develop detailed tariffs with different rates for every characteristic of the item to be delivered that affects its costs. Shape based rates reflect a rationalization of this approach but did not change the complicated traditional weight and distance based tariff significantly. The Postal Service has two products that take a non-traditional approach to pricing: Express Mail envelopes and Priority Mail flat-rate boxes. The forever stamp is an example of a non-traditional way of selling postage for letters. While the market has shown that the success of these products in the retail market, traditional thinking prevent using these successes to expand the simplification of prices for retail customers.

Regulatory processes act to protect existing service locations, ways of serving customers and rate relationships. Changing to a simplified, self-service model would change where postal services are bought and parcels are tendered and would require abandoning any linkage between rates charged to retail customers and business customers of the Postal Service. By moving toward a simplified, self-service model, most traditional post offices would be unnecessary except to protect the jobs of existing employees and the social benefits that they now provide. As the current controversy over closing less than 1,000 post offices shows, both postal employees and citizens seeing changes in cherished routines are quite effective in making their interests known to Congress and the PRC. Similarly, de-linking the rate relationships between retail and business customers of the Postal Service would require overturning nearly forty years of regulatory precedent that has tried to balance the share of overhead that these two types of customers should bear, let alone how the overhead costs should be born among the various types of business customers. De-linking rates charged to retail and business customers would put the PRC in the uncharted territory of choosing market based rates over cost model based rates. The rulemaking on workshare discounts illustrates how wedded customers are to the regulator process, the concept that historical rate relationships matter, and the search for cost theories that would justify new rates and a regulator set advantage over competitors or the Postal Service. Weaning customers off of PRC protection and de-linking the prices of retail and business customers could create a ruckus just as loud as what now exists for closing a few post offices.

The Postal Service weak financial position and near-total lack of capital financing options leave a real retail restructuring beyond the reach of Postal Management. Over the next two years, the Postal Service does not have the cash to pay all of its mandated obligations for retiree benefits and will use most of an expanded borrowing capability to just cover operating losses. The financial requirements of a program that is the magnitude of what Deutsche Post did would dwarf the Postal Service's investment in Automated Postal Centers and would also have to deal with start-up costs of restructuring the concept of retail and covering costs of excessing both employees and facilities. Postal management position is not much different that scene in many Christmas movies where poor children can see the toys in store window but have no hope of seeing them under the tree.

Eliminating all post offices, therefore, is just a fantasy. Unfortunately, so is developing a modern customer-focused model for serving the Postal Service's retail customers.

Consolidation of the Package Delivery Market in Europe

The Sunday Telegraph reported today that UPS has made an informal offer of $15 billion (10 billion Euro) to purchase TNT suggests that we may be watching the beginning of a major consolidation of express and parcel carriers in Europe. The price discussed is around 25% more than TNT's share price in mid-July when the Financial Times reported that FedEx was interested in TNT. UPS's offer is not unexpected as some investment analysts suggested, at the time time of the report of both FedEx and UPS would be interested in TNT. At that time some analysts suggested that UPS would be in a stronger financial position to buy TNT and if a bidding war broke out. As UPS's reported bid amount is about equal to the value of TNT based on the stock's close on August 8, 2008, the reported bid does not represent a premium on TNT's current market valuation.

The Telegraph report provides significantly more detail than the earlier report on FedEx's interest in TNT. The report includes the names of the investment advisers for both TNT and UPS and indicates that A.T. Kearney has completed a study for UPS's adviser in the deal, Morgan Stanley. The report also indicates that TNT's mail operations would be sold, possibly to CVC, the European buyout firm that owns interests in both De Post-La Post and Post Danmark. (Post Danmark also has agreed to merge with Posten, the Swedish Post Office) It is unclear whether the price for the postal operations is included in the $15 billion cost of the deal. Given that some of the increase in TNT's price over its price in mid July when rumors of a possible takeover first surfaced reflect the decline in oil prices, it is possible that the value of a deal when consummated will be greater than $15 billion. Also, what is unclear is whether TNT's ground parcel business would convey to UPS or the purchaser of the postal business.


The purchase of TNT by UPS would have a significant impact on competition within Europe. Currently, the five largest express competitors are TNT (17%), DHL (16%), UPS (8%), La Poste (the French Post Office) 7%, and FedEx (6%). The remaining 46% of the market is divided the national post offices and regional operators. With the merger UPS would be the clear market leader with 25% of the intra-European market and would be in stronger position for traffic between Western Europe and the rest of the world than the remaining two other global competitors, DHL and FedEx. Most importantly, UPS would then be in a better position to fill up its growing capacity in China and the rest of Asia with express traffic going between China and Europe than carriers with a smaller market position in Europe. In addition, UPS's stronger position in Europe would give it the opportunity to take market share from DHL and FedEx in the trans-Atlantic market.

The sale of the postal operations makes sense given that mail is not part of UPS's core business.
The proposed sales of TNT's mail business raises questions about the long term financial viability of European national posts, and in particular the posts of smaller countries. A merger of the TNT mail operations with Posten (Sweden), La Post (Belgium), and Post Dankan (Denmark) creates an entity with greater heft when competing with the larger national posts in Germany, France, and Great Britain. If TNT's growing ground parcel business remains with the postal entitity then the merger would have created a significant European competitor in parcels with particular strengths in the Benelux and Nordic regions. Without TNT's European ground parcel business, it is not clear how much an outside investor would be willing to pay for just mail services.

The merger of TNT's mail services with that of the other posts could have some positive impact on service. It could result in improved coordination of cross-border mail service among the linked companies with the possibility of stronger service to Great Britain and other regions where TNT has established itself as a leader in the competitive mail business.

Finally, if this merger goes through, one would expect that other competitors in the European market to start looking at defensive moves to improve their business position. The easiest
linkage to imagine is one between FedEx and LaPoste, since they have had a business relationship since at least 2000, but less obvious mergers may occur with a focus of FedEx and/or La Poste working to strengthen their position on a country by country basis. On the mail and ground parcel side, one could see an interest in smaller posts in Eastern and central Europe exploring mergers and operating agreements. The logical leaders in this region are Deusche Post, Oesterreich Post, and Swiss Post.

Is the Postal Service as Good as UPS and FedEx?

Recently, the Postal Service proudly announced its latest service performance results.

• Overnight service was 97 percent on-time, up from 96 percent the same period last year.
• Two-day service was 95 percent on-time, up from 93 percent the same period last year.
• Three-day service was 94 percent on-time, up from 91 percent the same period last year.
  
  

According to the New York Times, these results showed that First Class mail service performance is now at levels that rival the quality of a $40,587 Rolex. While this comparison is a bit factitious, comparing the Postal Service to private sector carriers suggests that it is possible for them to offer the same or better service quality. Firms that audit the bills of private sector carriers looking for refunds for missing service guarantees on overnight, second-day air, and ground services, have found that private sector carriers miss their service commitments on as many as 4% of all shipments.

The level of quality for measured First Class mail suggests that the Postal Service should be thinking really seriously about how improving service quality, and increasingly public reporting of improved service quality can increase revenue and market share in both competitive and market dominant products.

For competitive products, the Postal Service has two products that are now service competitive with DHL, United Parcel Service, and FedEx; Express Mail and Priority Mail.

Express Mail is price and service competitive with the private sector's economy overnight signature products when used as an overnight product. In addition, Express Mail is a price and service competitive alternative to the private sector's 2nd day air product over longer distances (e.g. Washington D.C. to Saint Paul, Minnesota) when tendered to the Postal Service after the final daily Express Mail pick-up. Express Mail is especially competitive with the competitors two day product when used in conjunction with carrier pick-up. In addition, if the Commission approves the proposed Express Mail Contract, contracts for Express Mail services may make sense for a wide range of potential customers interested in longer-distance 2nd Day service.

Currently, Priority Mail is possibly service competitive only in areas where private sector carriers currently have a two-day service commitment. For shorter distance routes (e.g. New York to Washington DC), the private sector generally offers overnight service for all products including their lowest cost ground parcel service. Priority Mail may offer overnight service for some items delivered within a Processing and Distribution Center's (PDC's) service area but does not make a commitment in that regard as the private sector carriers do and a PDC's service area is only a geographic subset of the area that the private sector commits to overnight delivery of ground parcels. However, service information reported in the quarterly reports suggests that Priority Mail is slower than First Class Mail for both local and longer distance mail. Therefore, one can assume that Priority Mail meets its service commitment at a lower lever than measured First Class mail information. Until more detailed service performance information is made public, the true service competitiveness of priority mail will not be known.

For short-distance Priority mail and all other products, the Postal Service could begin to use service as a competitive tool once it can tell customers exactly the service quality that is provided 95% of the time. At that point, mailers and shippers can more comfortably set their printing/shipping schedules to fit both the date they want delivery and the time that it takes the Postal Service to deliver. Given the current financial challenges, the future of the Postal Service may depend on delivering this service information.

Pensions and Structured Debt

The funding of pensions is an important issue for both United Parcel Service and DHL in the United States Market. Both carriers participate in Teamster multiemployer plans. While UPS will be withdrawing from Central States plan before the end of the year, it still a contributor to twenty other multiemployer plans and offers a single employer pension plan to its part-time employees and some non-union employees.

Pension plans have been some of the largest investors in the alphabet soup of structured debt investments and are now facing the potential of one trillion dollars in losses. These investments were offered by the largest investment banks and the investment quality was often rated highly by debt rating agencies such as Moody's and Standard and Poors. Most importantly, many of the multiemployer plans, to which UPS and DHL contribute, may be forced to sell their structured debt at a substantial loss. If required, this will occur soon after the investment grades of the debt are reset to reflect the current perception of risk which many believe will be below investment guidelines set by federal regulation and/or plan trustees.

Now that the true risk associated with these investments are becoming known, questions are being raised about whether any of the parties that were involved in decisions to invest in structured debt failed in their responsibilities and should be held financially accountable for losses that pension funds have incurred. These parties include the plan trustees, investment managers, and the rating agencies that determined that the structured debt met the investment quality standards of the pension plan's investment charter. The board of Trustees of the Teamsters Local 282 pension fund has filed a class action lawsuit against Moody's for giving excessively high ratings to bonds backed by subprime mortgages. While this suit focuses on the impact that Moody's action had on the valuation of Moody's stock, other suits against Countrywide Financial, Citigroup's 401(k) plan, State Street Corp. , Bear Stearns, and AIG illustrate that the issuers of debt and the trustees of pension and 401(k) plans face the risk of legal action. Contributors to multiemployer plans including UPS and DHL need to monitor these law suits in order to monitor their future financial risks.