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USPS still a relevant service

In a recent letter to the editor, Bryan Waller talked about the Postal Service and how it is past its time. I say, he needs to do his research. First of all, USPS receives no tax dollars, and hasn’t since the 1970s. They are required to prefund retiree healthcare, a payment of $5 billion dollars annually, which no other government agency or private company is required to do.

He also commented, “I can’t think of anything they process that couldn’t be emailed, tweeted, Facebooked, UPS’d or FedEx’d.” Let’s see … what about those things that FedEx and UPS do? Well, the post office delivers 2.2 million FedEx packages a day and about 37 million UPS packages a day. So, not only is the Postal Service delivering their own packages, but they are also delivering their competitors’ packages. The USPS has not seen the end of its days and will continue to evolve and change as the times require.

Everyone said that it would be the end of the Postal Service when the telegram came out, then the telephone, and now the Internet, which has been commercially available since the ’80s.

Another thing that USPS offers that no one else does is going to every home every day. How often do you visit that elderly relative of yours that lives home alone? If something happened to them, how long would they lay there before you found out? USPS carriers save countless lives every day of the forgotten elderly. So, I say again, people really need to research what they are saying before condemning the Postal Service, which includes its over 450,000 employees (it’s the third largest employer behind Wal-Mart and Homeland Security).

Sarah Melvin

Woodbridge, Va.

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