By SHERRY ROBINSON
All She Wrote
©2025 New Mexico News Services
What do these New Mexico communities have in common: Dulce, Gamerco, High Rolls, Hope, Lakewood, Medanales, Monument, Petaca, San Patricio, Sunspot, Timberon, Tinnie, Whites City, and Yatahey?
They’re all rural, and they (still) have post offices.
The U.S. Postal Service is facing some big changes. Even though we all just stood in lines to mail packages, our usage has declined. The internet has taken a bite out of the USPS, and yet people, especially in rural areas, still depend on it. In New Mexico one in four people live in rural areas, according to the U.S. Census.
Universal service is most at risk. This is the required delivery of mail to every U.S. address, regardless of how remote it might be. And, whether you’re mailing to New York City or Yeso, New Mexico, it’s the same cost. That’s what the Founding Fathers intended 250 years ago, but it hasn’t been profitable in years.
USPS delivers to 170 million addresses six days a week. The most expensive part of deliveries is the last leg, or what’s known as the last mile. For 30-plus years Amazon has had a sweet deal (too sweet) with the post office for last-mile delivery of Amazon packages. That contract has helped the USPS bottom line, but it still reported a $9 billion loss this year; net losses total $118 billion since 2007. That’s because first-class mail, once its most profitable service, has slumped steadily. USPS could run out of cash in 2027.
The Washington Post reported this month that USPS plans to beef up revenues by auctioning last-mile delivery to the highest bidder, forcing Amazon to compete with other retailers and shippers.
U.S. Postmaster General David Steiner told Reuters: “There’s only one thing I am absolutely certain of — if we continue to do things the way we’re doing it today, we’re dead in about a year, and so I have got to go out and test the market on this price to find out if it’s a fair price.”
Amazon’s very large nose is out of joint. The company had been negotiating rates and package volume with USPS and obviously expecting to extend its sweet deal. Now it’s threatening to use the post office less and expand its own network. If Amazon goes head to head, it would cherry pick the profitable shipping and leave mail and rural deliveries to the post office. Don’t expect Amazon drone deliveries to Trementina, New Mexico.
We’ve heard endlessly that the post office should operate more like a business. They’re trying to do that, but Amazon is pushing back. It’s in Amazon’s own interest for the post office to survive, but the internet giant has grown so large and entitled that it dismisses USPS’s financial realities and demands special treatment.
(By the way, I don’t shop Amazon. It’s a killer of local businesses.)
USPS has been a quasi-business since 1970 when President Richard Nixon transformed it from a federal cabinet department to an independent government agency. However, Congress keeps the post office in a tight grip, setting rates, deciding services, capping loans, and telling USPS how to operate. In 2006 Congress directed USPS to pre-fund employee retirement benefits for the next 75 years even though no federal department has such a requirement. The post office has been unprofitable ever since.
Arguments for privatization have been around for years. A task force during the first Trump administration recommended ending universal service, reducing employee wages and benefits, closing post offices, cutting delivery days and raising prices. Few in Congress had an appetite for this kind of sacrifice.
Studies since then have shown that 81% of rural customers value the post office, 57% of post offices are in rural areas, and 88% of the land served is in rural areas.
While it’s true that 63% of rural post offices aren’t profitable, that’s not the only number on the balance sheet. The post office is a community anchor. Because broadband access is still thin many people here need the mail. Postal carriers deliver some 1.2 billion prescription drugs each year, many to places a long way from a pharmacy. Veterans receive 84% off their prescriptions by mail. Rural carriers provide a unique service in simply keeping their eyes open. There are many stories about carriers saving lives and property, returning lost dogs or noticing something amiss. What price do the experts attach to that?
If USPS is to survive, Congress must make some decisions, beginning with the cherished concept of universal service, and then step up for rural delivery.