MorganHillTimes.com | Going postal over rate hikes

Going postal over rate hikes

Jun 3, 2008
By Gale Hammond

For your reading pleasure today, some fun facts about the post office: last month, your post office raised the rate of a first-class stamp by one cent!

OK, that wasn't fun, especially if you happen to be a large corporation that pays hefty postage fees or if you're Gilbert Gottfried. "Now what on earth does Gilbert Gottfried have to do with the price of postage?" you as an astute reader are no doubt asking me except of course I am unable to hear you. For those unfamiliar with Mr. Gottfried, he's the voice of the AFLAC Duck on TV and I know; you still don't see what this has to do with postage rates.

I will explain: Mr. Gottfried's cushy job as a duck voice may be in jeopardy due to a war waged by a group of pushy poultry protectors in Machipongo (motto: "Hey, It Might Sound Tropical But This So Ain't Fiji!"), Virginia. In an "Action Alert," an organization called United Poultry Concerns (UPC) is urging the public to write letters to AFLAC because their commercials are degrading to ducks and no, I am not making this up. UPC suggests AFLAC attire a person in a duck costume for future commercials.

Separate groups are attacking the California cheese commercials featuring our state's own happy cows. I mean - where will it end, people? Will Raid canisters with their shocking cartoon depictions of deceased roaches and other hostile life forms be next?

I do have a point, although I lost sight of it there for a moment: Will the unfortunate increase of one cent per stamp discourage ordinary people from writing letters to AFLAC and the California cow/cheese people, thus creating the further degradation of ducks and random livestock?

Yes, friends, I'm here to ask the tough questions, but let's get back to more fun facts. Did you know that the USPS handled a total of 212 billion pieces of mail last year? Or that the postal service processes mail at 8,000 pieces per second? And should you snag an appearance on Jeopardy, you ought to know that the post office at the lowest elevation in the U.S. is Mecca (Motto: "We're the Other One"), California and the post office at the highest elevation is Leadville, Colo.

Now I'm no math expert, but let's assume that the 212 billion pieces of mail the post office folks handled last year each took one first-class stamp. Of course that wasn't the case; I'm just saying "what if." So with 212 billion pieces of mail requiring a $.41 cent stamp each, the postal service received (and I'm not sure my calculator has enough zeros for this, but here goes): $86.92 billion. That's a lotta stamps, people! And the recent $.01 increase raises the USPS's gross income by more than $2.1 billion - yep, that's "billion." With a "B."

Interestingly, the USPS doesn't run on money derived from taxpayer funds. This was news to me. I was quite indignant about the post office using my tax dollars to advertise on TV until I learned that the postal service is "self-sustaining," so to speak. So I withdraw my indignation. Although who hasn't griped about the post office losing their mail, but even that is rare when you add up all the mail they handle. So I guess we can't really complain about that too much, either.

And now let's return to more fun facts about our friendly postal service: ZIP codes were introduced in 1963. "ZIP" stands for "Zoning Improvement Plan." And the first postage stamp was issued in 1847, costing a mere $.02 - a real bargain considering the time and effort it took to move the mail. Then, in 1860, along came a competitor. Yep - just like today as UPS and others are making inroads through USPS turf, a daring interloper appeared on the scene for a short time: The Pony Express. A faster method of moving the mail between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, this method was expensive. A hefty $5 was charged for a half-ounce letter, later dropping to $1. When the company failed to land a million dollar contract with the government The Pony Express went out of business showing a net loss of $200,000.

The cost of a first-class stamp held steady at $.02 until 1917 when the cost skyrocketed to $.03. That price remained for an astounding 41 years before making another $.01 climb in 1958.

Stamps cost $.05 when I was in high school, and no; we weren't writing our letters on stone tablets. Back then we could send letters first class or choose the important "Airmail" option to speed things up a notch. Airmail stamps were a pricey $.08, and we bought special "onionskin" paper to keep our letters lightweight (trust me, my high school letters were lightweight to the point of frivolous). Onionskin was so thin that the reverse side of a typed letter felt like Braille.

So what can we do about the perpetual postal rate increases? Well, we can purchase "Forever" stamps. Pay the going rate per stamp and we can use them "forever." Then just try figuring out how many Forever stamps to buy! What a bother! I must calculate the actual number of stamps I'll need to last the rest of my life by computing the amount of stamps I use per year times the number of years I expect to live, not forgetting Christmas when I use a ton of extra stamps for Christmas card mailing, and oh, boy … this kind of thing gives me a headache.

I know what I'll do! I'll stop mailing stuff and simply drive my checks all over town to pay our bills. Or I'll hop into my car and go visit friends instead of sending cards and letters. Yep! That's the ticket! And … oops - what's that you say? The price of gas is up? To more than $4 a gallon? Oh, well, never mind.

Gale Hammond
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at GaleHammond@aol.com.