USPS has awarded contracts to five companies to develop a battery for an electric-powered light delivery vehicle. These vendors will use current vehicles as the base and convert them to electric power. Prototype vehicles from all five companies are scheduled to arrive in August. The Postal Service will spend the next year testing them in and around the Washington, DC, metropolitan area.

Vehicle technology continues to evolve, including the use of alternative fuels. In addition to battery power, USPS is evaluating a number of other fuels including compressed natural gas, propane, E -85, diesel and hydrogen fuel cell. There are plenty of options and finding the best solution will require careful analysis to make sure the best vehicle is selected.

Reducing energy use is one of the Postal Service’s major sustainability goals. Around the country, USPS is making excellent progress to reach that goal compared to a year ago. Fuel consumption for USPS-owned vehicles has decreased 3.7 percent, or 2.6 million gallons.

source: USPS

See coupon At Palm Beach Post

Full Story: The Gloucester County TimesUSPS, APWU await arbitration ruling in move to close distribution center in Logan Township

FSS facility summary by FSS location – 47 sites
FSS Locations as of May 2010

FSS Deployment Schedule for 100 machines to 47 sites
FSS Deployment Schedule – Updated August 2010 – RIBBS Version

Zone listing for 9 FSS operational sites
A list of zones and their anticipated live mail dates for each site and corresponding machine(s) activated up through November 29, 2010.
Zone List by Operational Site

Zones for all sites as of September 7, 2010 Zone List for RIBBS – September 2010

Notice of Availability: Programmatic Environmental Assessment for Mobile Fueling Operations, Nationwide

AGENCY: Postal Service.

ACTION: Notice of availability of a Programmatic Environmental Assessment.

SUMMARY: To comply with the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Postal Service has prepared and is making available a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the use of mobile fueling contractors to fuel postal vehicles on-site at selected Postal Service facilities located throughout the United States. This PEA evaluated the environmental impacts of the proposed action versus taking no action. Based on the results of the PEA, the Postal Service has issued a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) indicating that the proposed action will not have a significant impact on the environment.

ADDRESSES: Interested parties may direct questions or requests for additional information, including requests for copies of the PEA and FONSI documents, to: Ms. Melinda Hulsey Edwards, Manager, Environmental Compliance and Risk Mitigation, Environmental Policy and Programs, U.S. Postal Service, 225 N. Humphreys Blvd, Memphis, TN 38166-0865; (901) 747-7424.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The Postal Service proposes to utilize mobile fueling contractors to fuel vehicles on-site at select postal facilities located throughout the United States. The program would focus on, but not be limited to city and rural delivery units with 30 or more routes using vehicles owned by the Postal Service. Based on these criteria, it is anticipated that up to 1,100 sites may be eligible to convert to mobile fueling.

Mobile fueling, also known as fleet fueling, wet fueling, or wet hosing, is the practice of filling fuel tanks of vehicles directly from tank trucks. In this scenario, mobile refueling contractors would drive tank trucks onto Postal Service property to fuel parked delivery vehicles and drive the tank trucks off the site when fueling is completed. The only alternative identified is the “no action” alternative of continuing to fuel delivery vehicles off-site at commercial gas stations.

Pursuant to the requirements of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969, its implementing procedures at 39 CFR 775, and the President’s Council on Environmental Quality Regulations (40 CFR parts 1500-1508), the Postal Service has prepared a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) to evaluate the environmental impacts of the proposed action versus the “no action” alternative.

Based on the results of the PEA, the USPS has issued a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) indicating that the proposed action will not have a significant impact on the environment. Mitigation requirements will include compliance with applicable regulatory programs, as well as Postal Service policy and contract requirements specific to each facility selected to participate in the mobile fueling program.

source: Federal Register

Union Challenges Existence of Postal Service Financial Crisis

Washington, DC – Underscoring the recklessness of the massive rate increase proposed by the United States Postal Service on July 6, American Postal Workers Union President William Burrus made clear on Friday that his Union does not believe the Service is currently in an unprecedented financial position. He made it clear that the Union will not back away from its contract demands during the current round of negotiations with the Postal Service, despite its supposed financial crisis. This furthers the case against the Postal Service request for a rate hike 10 times the rate of inflation.

“Mail volume is depressed and revenue is down, but we have faced similar circumstances before,” President Burrus said. “The history of the Postal Service is replete with forecasts of doom and gloom.” Click here to read or view President Burrus’ full statement.

A law passed in 2006 limits postal rate increases to the rate of inflation except when “extraordinary or exceptional” circumstances make a larger increase necessary for the Postal Service to continue operating “despite best practices of honest, efficient and economical management.” The Consumer Price Index has gone up less than 1 percent in the past year, the USPS is proposing rate increases of 10 times that rate. The Postal Service claims that its losses result from the “exigent circumstances” of the long-forecast recession and the long-term loss of mail volume to the Internet.

Also opposing the rate increase proposal is the Affordable Mail Alliance, an unprecedented coalition of more than 1,000 postal customers and trade associations representing the majority of the mail sent in the United States, who have joined together to strike down the rate hike. The Postal Service’s projected shortfalls are not the sole result of the recession or the increased use of the Internet, but the Service’s long-standing failure to control its costs. These chronic problems do not qualify as “exigent” circumstances under the law. Until the Postal Service deals with these long-term problems, any demands for above-inflation rate increases – in effect, a new tax on customers – is unwarranted and unproductive, and will likely drive away customers while exacerbating the Postal Service’s problems.

That is the central case put forward in multiple filings by the Affordable Mail Alliance with the Postal Regulatory Commission, the independent body that will decide early next month whether to allow the proposed rate hikes to take effect.

“President Burrus’ statements confirm that the Postal Service’s current condition is not the product of a sudden crisis,” said Jerry Cerasale, Affordable Mail Alliance spokesperson and Senior Vice President, Government Affairs of the Direct Marketing Association. “This is yet more evidence that a rate hike 10 times the rate of inflation is unnecessary and unproductive – for postal customers and the Postal Service itself. Such a rate increase would delay the cost controls and other reforms that are long overdue.”

He added that the Postal Service needs to do what most American businesses have been forced to do in the past few years: to make better and tougher decisions, offer services customers need, address workforce problems, and cut back on needlessly high spending.

More on the Affordable Mail Alliance

The Affordable Mail Alliance is an unprecedented coalition of postal customers who have come together to say “enough is enough” – no more postal rate hikes. The coalition includes charities, consumer groups, small business, national retailers, utilities, banks, insurance companies, Fortune 500 companies, and the customers who use the Post Office every day. The members represent many of the Postal Service’s biggest customers—and many of its smallest—and use every major class of mail. It is this cross-section of America that will suffer if USPS raises rates. For further information, please visit www.affordablemailalliance.org or contact Jessica McCreight at jmccreight@SKDKnick.com or 202 464 6900.

Ohio: Car crashes into Heath post office
California: Car Crashes Into Walnut Creek Post Office

Houston Drive-In, Texas, 1951
Granville W. Elder, acting postmaster of the Houston, Texas, Post Office, first experimented with a drive-in for customers in late 1947 to expedite the handling of Christmas mail. Set up in the Sam Houston Coliseum, the drive-in was used by thousands of Houstonians and relieved traffic congestion near the downtown Post Office. In the 1950s, drive-ins – some of them seasonal – also popped up at offices in Illinois, California, and Maryland, but the idea was never broadly embraced.

Drive-In Post Office In Houston, Texas, 1951

Washington, DC – The Affordable Mail Alliance – a growing coalition of non-profits, Fortune 500 companies, small businesses, major trade associations, consumer groups, and citizens representing the vast majority of the mail sent in the United States – filed comments urging the Postal Regulatory Commission to help rein in the USPS’s excessive costs by denying the proposed rate hike.

“The Post Office needs to reevaluate their approach,” said Jerry Cerasale, Affordable Mail Alliance Spokesperson and Senior Vice President of the Direct Marketing Association. “Instead of trying to keep things afloat with a giant tax on consumers, the USPS should focus on improving management and controlling costs to get out of this mess. To do otherwise is just bad business.”

This is the Alliance’s final legal step before the PRC announces their decision on October 4.

The comments also highlight the Postal Service’s flip-flop on the cause for their request. The USPS previously claimed that such a severe rate increase was needed to alleviate an immediate and unforeseen cash crisis. But at the public hearing held on August 10, a top official admitted that the “crisis” would not prevent them from operating in their current fashion for at least the next year. The Postal Service now claims that the rate increase is needed to prevent a longer-term profit slowdown over the next decade.

“Our comments make the same case that businesses and working families are making all over the country,” said Cerasale. “The Postal Service’s proposed rate hike is unreasonable, unhelpful, and unlawful, and the more than one thousand members of the Alliance are not going to let the Postal Service take advantage of its customers.”

The comments reiterate what the Alliance has argued all along – that the Postal Service has failed to show that it would suffer from its projected losses if it followed “best practices of honest, efficient and economical management,” and has failed to meet the “extraordinary or exceptional” circumstance test of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. The increase thus should be rejected, especially at this time of economic uncertainty for America.

Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), a key author of the 2006 law, has supported the Alliance’s position. In her statement following the Postal Regulatory Commission hearings, Senator Collins said that the law being cited by the Post Office was intended for use in circumstances such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks. The Post Office’s “failure to sufficiently update its business model,” she said, was not sufficient for special consideration.

Formed in response to the US Postal Service’s July 6th announcement that it would seek to raise rates far beyond those currently allowed by law, the Affordable Mail Alliance grew from a small group of concerned USPS customers to a membership of over a thousand in less than two months. The Alliance has been gaining momentum in the wake of recent Postal Regulatory Commission Hearings, and this most recent action provides a strong argument to the PRC in advance of its coming decision on the issue.

Related link:  Affordable Mail Alliance Document Submitted to PRC

(HOUSTON) – Linda Taylor, 50, of Coldspring, Texas, has been arrested as a result of the return of a one-count indictment charging her with theft of U.S. Mail, United States Attorney Jose Angel Moreno announced today. 

Indicted by a Houston grand jury on Aug. 19, 2010, Taylor surrendered to agents with the United States Postal Service – Office of Inspector General (USPS-OIG) today. Following a hearing before United States Magistrate Judge John Froeschner, Taylor has been ordered released on a $5,000 bond.

The indictment  arose from an investigation conducted by USPS-OIG special agents into a complaint by a Coldspring resident residing along a route serviced by Taylor that an item she had placed as outgoing mail in her curbside mailbox for retrieval by aletter carrier had never been deliveredto the intended recipients. 

Taylor began her employment as a contractor for the USPS in May 2008. If convicted, Taylor faces a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment and/or a $250,000 fine.

The case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Tammie Y. Moore.   

An indictment is a formal accusation of criminal conduct, not evidence.
A defendant is presumed innocent unless convicted through due process of law.

source: United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas

On Aug. 14, the U.S. Postal Service eliminated five of San Rafael’s 75 postal routes and changed about half of the remaining routes, said James Wigdel, a postal service spokesman. No carriers lost their jobs.

For a few years, the postal service has been changing routes nationwide for cost savings and efficiency, officials said. In addition to the recent San Rafael changes, several of Novato’s approximately 60 routes were adjusted at the end of July, and managers eliminated two of Mill Valley’s 34 routes, Wigdel said.

Two weeks after the changes took effect in San Rafael, carriers and customers were still reeling.

Full story