Amazon gets priority while mail gets delayed, say US letter carriers

Re:Amazon gets priority while mail gets delayed, say US lett... by luckylion on Monday July 27, 2020 @04:57AM (#23963362)

The crazy part is that their special Amazon tariffs seem to not really cover costs, so individual package delivery goes up in price instead.

Amazon might make up 20-30% of volume, but they also pay only 20-30% of the normal price for delivery. Which is crazy when you consider that most of the cost for delivery comes from the actual delivery to your door. That doesn't magically scale and get cheaper per unit because Amazon hands over a large amount of packages.

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Re:Amazon gets priority while mail gets delayed, say US lett... by jellicle on Monday July 27, 2020 @09:11AM (#23964720)

Mail delivery, like many internet services, has very nice economies of scale. Once you are paying the setup cost for someone to go to every door every day, the marginal cost of adding one more package is not high. So USPS can probably offer any particular mail-sender very low rates and justify them with the idea that the revenue exceeds their marginal cost to deliver (though if they offer everyone such low rates they won't be covering their true overall costs).

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Amazon gets priority while mail gets delayed, say US lett... by luckylion on Monday July 27, 2020 @09:36AM (#23964918)

Probably, but that's for regular mail only, not for parcels because you don't go to every door every day and deliver larger packages.

[ Parent | on HN ]