'They're not needed':

[dutch508]

Star Member Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin (52,195 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213946933

'They're not needed': Postmaster General DeJoy says USPS won't replace removed mail-sorting machines

The US Postal Service will not replace the mail-sorting machines it has removed, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the Senate's Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Friday.

Sen. Gary Peters, who serves on the committee, questioned DeJoy on how his policies, including the elimination of an unknown number of those machines and limiting how often employees can work late or make extra trips, have contributed to a slowdown in mail delivery.

The removal and destruction of mail-sorting machines has become a politically sensitive topic in recent weeks. Postal workers and union leaders have express sed concern that the loss of these machines, which can sort 36,000 pieces of mail per hour, could hamper the USPS' ability to respond to the uptick of election mail coming this fall.

Prominent Democrats called for the hearing to "examine the sweeping operational and organizational changes at the Postal Service that experts warn could degrade delivery standards, slow the mail and potentially impair the rights of eligible Americans to cast their votes through the mail in the upcoming November elections," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and others wrote in a joint statement.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/they-re-not-needed-sir-postmaster-general-louis-dejoy-says-usps-won-t-replace-removed-mail-sorting-machines/ar-BB18emcu?li=BBnbfcQ&ocid=DELLDHP

They'll sort themselves. It'll be a faith based post Office.

 

LisaL (35,376 posts)

1. Not needed? Why is the mail slow then?

Why is post office sending letters to states that they don't have enough time for ballot delivery?

This would be the point that I tell you that ballots, being oversized, would not go through the letter sorter, but through the 'Flats and Smalls' sorter... the kind they are removing the letter sorters in order to put in the F&Ss sorters...

 

Star Member LiberalArkie (12,913 posts)

5. It appears from pictures being shown are packages, boxes, etc being late.

They probably want to replace a lot of the flat-mail (letters in envelopes) sorters with sorters that can handle boxes and the not flat envelopes.

But doing right before the election is what makes it political. The goal is probably good, but the timing is political. Installing sorters for the boxes and things would speed up Christmas presents also.

There are three types of mail.

Letters, your normal letter sized stuff up to half sized A4 ads, post cards and the like.

Flats and Smalls, with are magazines, newspapers, and ads, oversized items, including small parcels.

Parcels, up to and including big boxes.

I would say 70% of the mail anymore is of the Flats and Smalls category.

LisaL (35,376 posts)

6. I don't think the goal is good for one second.

USPS is complaining they haven't got the money. Mail sorting machines have been taken out, and were any box sorting machines put in their place? I don't think so. Those machines are expensive. If there is no money, how would they purchase million dollar box sorting machines?

Letter sorting machines, which are the ones being removed, don't have the volume of mail that they used to. The newer, bigger F&S sorters are projected to be installed over the next few years. The plan for this all has been in the works for about 10 years.

Star Member Hoyt (44,853 posts)

3. As far as the sorters, it's pretty clear USPS has a lot of excess capacity and could remove

a bunch more without impacting delivery.

Now, other aspects of operations might be an issue, but it's not the sorting machines.

Star Member Hoyt (44,853 posts)

19. Because sorters are only one component of US Mail. For example, these flat sorters darn

sure don't have anything to do with medicines and baby chicks supposedly being late. Why -- Because they don't go through the flat sorters.

Post Office has more than enough sorters to handle letter processing. Even the American Postal Workers Union says we could drastically cut the number of sorters"

"According to a grievance filed by the American Postal Workers Union and obtained by The Washington Post, the USPS was poised to decommission 671 of the massive machines, roughly 10 percent of its inventory, and capable of sorting 21.4 million pieces of paper mail per hour. The Postal Service, by comparison, processes as much as 500 million items each day."

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213942587

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/heres-why-the-postal-service-wanted-to-remove-hundreds-of-mail-sorting-machines/ar-BB18bNzo?li=BBnb7Kz

Star Member ProfessorGAC (42,321 posts)

16. If The Hardware Is A Sunk Cost...

...what is the cost of excess capacity?
Removing the machines does not return the sunken funds.
So, excess capacity or not, what benefit is attained?
I can see not performing repairs if one fails catastrophically. But, there's no economic value to removing working hardware because it provides excess capacity.

  Its to make room for newer, better machines...

Star Member ProfessorGAC (42,321 posts)

18. Maintenance?

If they're so obsolete, run them to failure. What's the point of decommissioning.
Do no maintenance. When they fail, get rid of them.
And, if that drop in mail means they need a lower operational capacity, why did the mail slow down?
According to you, they were unnecessary. If true, mail delivery would be unnoticeably affected.
But we know that's not true.
So, apparently they DO need those machines.
Operational efficiency is never an x therefore y situation. There are too many independent, but interactive variables.
And the data suggest other than that which you proferred.

 

stopdiggin (3,185 posts)

23. Um. No.

"If true, mail delivery would be unnoticeably affected. But we know that's not true."

All sorts of other factors going in to the equation.

Star Member ProfessorGAC (42,321 posts)

25. Um, No

You can't prove that, nor can I.
We do not know what factor, alone or interactively, negatively impacted efficiency.
So, your "pithy" reply was a waste of both our time.

 

stopdiggin (3,185 posts)

27. I can certainly assert that there ARE other factors at play

which undercuts the premise of your post. Removed sorters = slowed delivery and performance.

"According to you, they were unnecessary. If true, mail delivery would be unnoticeably affected.
But we know that's not true.
So, apparently they DO need those machines."

What effect those other acknowledged factors have on the outcome/output -- you're correct, neither of us know the answer to that -- but that doesn't counter the fact that it is not a single factor equation, as you put forth.

If you don't like being corrected -- don't make poor arguments.

Star Member Abnredleg (302 posts)

26. I suspect the slow down has to do with the procedures

That have been put in place. For instance, there have been stories of shipments of chickens dying while in transit - those shipments don’t go through sorting machines. Same with medicines - they don’t go though the type of machines that are being removed.

As to running stuff to until it dies, that has a cost, and if you don’t need the capacity, why pay for it? There has been a fifty percent drop in mail in the last 20 years so it stands to reason that there is excess capacity that can be removed.

Freethinker65 (6,998 posts)

10. The machines most likely will not be needed after the election.

The USPS has been getting less flat parcels sorted by those machines than packages for some time. However, those sorters should have been left to do their jobs until AFTER the known influx of ballot applications and mail in ballots due to COVID of this election. There was no reason to dismantle them before.

stopdiggin (3,185 posts)

15. it's also been stated that the decision to decommission some of the sorters predated the arrival of DeJoy. Clear excess capacity. I think some of the decisions on procedure, operations (overtime, etc.) are probably having a greater impact on actual delivery -- and thus ought to be the greater focus for opponents than the mail sorters. The machines and the blue boxes are a nice visible target -- but might not be the right ones?

Star Member MoonRiver (33,987 posts)

21. When Biden becomes president that POS needs to be prosecuted for mail tampering!

 

[DLR Pyro]

Remember how the DUmmies became overnight experts on the ins and out of the electronic voting machines in the early 2000's? 

Fast forward 20 years and now they are overnight experts of the USPS and the mechanics of what makes it run....

[thundley4]

LisaL (35,376 posts)

1. Not needed? Why is the mail slow then?

Why is post office sending letters to states that they don't have enough time for ballot delivery?

Lazy-ass union letter carriers is my guess. My wife uses the USPS app that allows you to view mail that will be delivered that day. Yeah right. There have been many times that we were supposed to get something, but it didn't show up for 2-3 days.

[I_B_Perky]

Do the dummies realize that these old machines were at the functional end of their life over 30 years ago?  Sometimes it is cheaper to retire them and purchase new, a very long process, than try to get maintenance on them.

To give you a comparision dummies, try to get parts for  for a 85 cavalier type 10 and you will understand what I am saying.

[SSG Snuggle Bunny]

I thought this was a thread about the Democrats themselves.

[landofconfusion80]

Do the dummies realize that these old machines were at the functional end of their life over 30 years ago?  Sometimes it is cheaper to retire them and purchase new, a very long process, than try to get maintenance on them.

To give you a comparision dummies, try to get parts for  for a 85 cavalier type 10 and you will understand what I am saying.

I had a job dedicated to this very thing. The company made the same light bulbs since the 60s with minimal changes. They ran into the problem of machinery becoming obsolete and my having to design new stuff to build the same lightbulbs

[SVPete]

I had a job dedicated to this very thing. The company made the same light bulbs since the 60s with minimal changes. They ran into the problem of machinery becoming obsolete and my having to design new stuff to build the same lightbulbs

A previous job was with a defense contractor that made Klystrons, Traveling Wave Tubes (TWTs), and Microwave Power Modules (MPMs, a high voltage power supply, pre-amplifier, and TWT integrated in one case) for the military. Military projects typically have long development cycles and reeeeally long product lifetimes.

For MPMs, that meant the the first batch of fully functional prototypes got made and then nothing, possibly excepting a few repairs, for several years. Sometimes those several years were long enough that when a production order came there was a scramble to find equivalents for components that had been obsoleted, sometimes even including a printed circuit board re-spin. Then came several years in which hundreds or a couple thousand would be produced, and then production of that MPM model was stopped. After that would be years of ongoing trickle of repairs, and then ... maybe an order for another large batch and another scramble to find equivalents for components that had been obsoleted, and so forth.

Whether military or civilian industrial, equipment with life-cycles spanning multiple decades are a tightrope balance between keeping valuable assets in use and products in production, having to find sources of scarce parts or find equivalents that can be adapted, or buying new, expensive, equipment and figuring out how to integrate that into existing processes or equipment. With military grade semiconductors there are companies whose business model is to buy the whole line of equipment from On Semiconductor (Motorola) or TI for producing devices they have obsoleted and supplying those parts to defense contractors who are supporting or producing products with long life-cycles.

Because of their employment histories or sometimes lack thereof, not many DU-folk have experienced or cared about parts obsolescence beyond replacing their old PC/Mac or cell phone or washing machine (the ones who wash,   ).