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Dayton Business Journal...
U.S. Postal Service
spent $1B on vehicles last year
By Barton Eckert, DBJ Contributor
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
The U.S. Postal Service may not be able to pay to maintain its vehicle
fleet, according to a new report.
In the red and saying it expects to run out of money in September, the
United States Postal Service spent $1 billion in the last fiscal year
to maintain its fleet of vehicles and to buy fuel.
A new report from the Government Accountability Office goes on to say
for the first six months of fiscal year 2011, USPS reported a net loss
of $2.6 billion, worse than it expected. The report said without
legislative change, the postal service will have to default on payments
to the government, including a $5.5 billion payment for its retiree
health benefits.
The report said USPS’s delivery fleet is largely composed of about
141,000 custom-built, right-hand-drive vehicles with an aluminum body
16 to 23 years old, that are approaching the end of their expected
24-year operational lives.
The GAO report showed that while about 77 percent of its delivery
vehicles incurred less than $3,500 in direct annual maintenance costs
in fiscal year 2010, about 3 percent (5,349 vehicles) required more
than $7,000, and 662 vehicles required more than $10,500 in direct
annual maintenance costs. That is more than one-third the $31,000 per
vehicle replacement cost USPS currently estimates.
In March, the post office announced it was eliminating 7,500 jobs and
closing seven district offices, including one in Ohio.
The post office competes against other package delivery companies such
as FedEx Corp. and United Parcel Service Inc.
Read it with links at the Dayton Business Journal
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