when I read that the U.s. Postal Service announced that at least 223 mail processing facility could be closed or combined in the coming year as part of a cost-cutting plan for a three-year, $ 15 billion, I realized just how much these developments will affect business operations.
Our company, TargetGov, provides services and products to help other businesses became very successful in commercial and federal government contracting market. We regularly use the local post office to ship products nationwide, and as a result, we see the closures as a negative operational changes that would restrict access to vital resources and impact our customer service by causing the shipping time to improve.
Closing postal facilities and eliminate Saturday service also affects us by increasing the cost of delivery for the products we sell as well as those that we buy online. In order to serve our clients with quick order turnaround and fast delivery, we will adapt and use other services like FedEx and UPS more frequently, but these costs are often two to three times higher.
We already operate on tight margins due to the current economic climate, and because we cannot absorb the additional overhead, we left raising the price for products to be delivered and improved delivery times, which are both disruptive alternative to small business owners.
On the other hand, from a business perspective is straight forward, my eyes were opened when I learned that the U.s. Postal Service has approximately 6,000 delivery bar code sorter and a lot of these machines used only about a third of the day, rather than a full 16 to 20 hours a day that they designed. From that angle, close some offices, consolidating jobs and cutting working hours to meet the market shrunk a great business sense.