Canada Post - Huge losses

Mad Mike said:
There are some complicated labor issues. LC jobs have been deeply tied to complex route measurement schemes, time/value calculations, union seniority, and route ownership. Modernizing process is difficult when these systems are steeped in tradition and generally stacked toward lightening workloads. If CPC automates something that saves time for a worker -- that may only benefit the worker as complicated rules and agreements don't provide CPC the advantages of modernization or technology investment.

I don't know if it's still the case, but union rules provide paid time to LCs for sorting mail -- something that hasn't been done for nearly 2 decades when CPC started presorting mail for them.
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They could still improve this whole process, even with manual labour. CP had a plan to convert depots with improved efficiency by having the mail presorted by depot clerks. This way LC's can pick up and go.

The only mail currently partially sorted is your typical lettermail.
 
Stamp price went up about 10% today (was 92, now 99 cents in rolls). As with every other government entity, why cut costs when you can just raise more money that people have very few options to avoid paying?
 
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GreyGhost said:
Stamp price went up about 10% today (was 92, now 99 cents in rolls). As with every other government entity, why cut costs when you can just raise more money that people have very few options to avoid paying?
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Does anyone actually know what percent of the revenue comes from simple letter stamps would doubling them to $2 erase the deficit.

Sent from the future
 
Scuba Steve said:
Does anyone actually know what percent of the revenue comes from simple letter stamps would doubling them to $2 erase the deficit.

Sent from the future
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I don't speak CP but it sounds like stamps are "transaction mail" and they make up about 33% of the revenue. Double the price of the stamps with no other changes (and assuming mail volume didn't decline which it would substantially imo) and you add 3B to revenue. That far exceeds the losses last year. I was lazy and found 2022 data first, I didn't bother looking at 2023 data but I assume it won't be grossly different.

Our financial results | Annual Report 2022

Get details of the key factors that influenced the financial loss reported by Canada Post in its 2022 Annual Report.
www.canadapost-postescanada.ca www.canadapost-postescanada.ca
 
GreyGhost said:
I don't speak CP but it sounds like stamps are "transaction mail" and they make up about 33% of the revenue. Double the price of the stamps with no other changes (and assuming mail volume didn't decline which it would substantially imo) and you add 3B to revenue. That far exceeds the losses last year. I was lazy and found 2022 data first, I didn't bother looking at 2023 data but I assume it won't be grossly different.

Our financial results | Annual Report 2022

Get details of the key factors that influenced the financial loss reported by Canada Post in its 2022 Annual Report.
www.canadapost-postescanada.ca www.canadapost-postescanada.ca
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I would bet raising it to $2 would make very little difference in volume The only things being mailed in letters are things that have to be mailed at this point.$2 is still a deal to get your letter from one side of the country to the other.

Sent from the future
 
Scuba Steve said:
I would bet raising it to $2 would make very little difference in volume The only things being mailed in letters are things that have to be mailed at this point.$2 is still a deal to get your letter from one side of the country to the other.

Sent from the future
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I was thinking more from the business side. Doubling the price of mailing may get many businesses that still send out paper documentation to accelerate towards online. Incremental steps and they may continue on as each incremental step isn't a huge amount of money. I am thinking of enbridge sending out a million bills a month not a small company sending out a handful of invoices. Enbridge could offer a $20 bill credit to those who switch and it would pay off to them within a year.
 
GreyGhost said:
I was thinking more from the business side. Doubling the price of mailing may get many businesses that still send out paper documentation to accelerate towards online. Incremental steps and they may continue on as each incremental step isn't a huge amount of money. I am thinking of enbridge sending out a million bills a month not a small company sending out a handful of invoices. Enbridge could offer a $20 bill credit to those who switch and it would pay off to them within a year.
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I'm moving all my stuff to electronic. Most of that is financial statements converting over to online portals. The real standout right now is insurance policies. I think I might be able to convert those as well. IF so then I would get almost zero mail.
 
Scuba Steve said:
I would bet raising it to $2 would make very little difference in volume The only things being mailed in letters are things that have to be mailed at this point.$2 is still a deal to get your letter from one side of the country to the other.

Sent from the future
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It would make a huge difference to high-volume mailers. I remember rolling out a bank program to convert customers to e-statements and e-communications for the credit card business -- they reduced mailing costs from $12M a month to $4M and that was only credit cards. Double that back to $8M and they're going to find ways to roll back costs.

CPC needs to do a couple of things to 'get better' at what they do:

1) Better align services with customer needs and expectations. Supermailboxes and less frequent deliveries (2 days a week?), reduce the cost and improve package delivery services within North America.
2) Make process improvements that can come from technological change and investments.
3) Do a better job partnering, many of their partner relationships crash or burn. They could be a cost-effective last-mile carrier for UPS, DHL, Amazon, FedEx to households anywhere in Canada.
 
timtune said:
Don't you need all that regardless?
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No, you don’t need that with foot letter carriers. We don’t drive a vehicle so all of those points I mentioned earlier aren’t added costs.
 
Mad Mike said:
I don't know if it's still the case, but union rules provide paid time to LCs for sorting mail -- something that hasn't been done for nearly 2 decades when CPC started presorting mail for them.
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Well that shows you don’t know a whole bunch about CP.
Yes, there are many depots that are fully “sequenced” mail - machine sorted to your route. We still get about 200 pieces+ a day that need manual Sortation (computers can’t read the hand writing, oversized pieces of addressed junk mail, anything larger than a regular letter sized envelope is all manual sort. Packets and parcels are all manual sort as well.

Now in any non-central GTA area, there are a huge number of posties that must manually sort *ALL* of their route. Even in Guelph, the foot carriers and CP vehicle posties get sequenced mail. That’s about half of the depot. The other half, the RSMC’s (Rural and Suburban Mail Carrier) manually sort ALL of their routes as well, and must supply their own personal vehicle. CP pays them a set amount for fuel and insurance.

Go to every single rural or small town depot. They are all manual sort mail as well.

As for paid time to sort the mail, we are expected to be out of the depot in under 2 hours. Guelph restructured the depot this past July. They cut out 7 full time foot walks and redistributed them amongst the other carriers. The average route is over 23km of walking a day. Many people believe that we leave the depot with all of our mail in our bags in the morning. Unfortunately, that’s completely untrue. We reload our mail bags an average of 10-13 times a day.
 
Mad Mike said:
It would make a huge difference to high-volume mailers. I remember rolling out a bank program to convert customers to e-statements and e-communications for the credit card business -- they reduced mailing costs from $12M a month to $4M and that was only credit cards. Double that back to $8M and they're going to find ways to roll back costs.

CPC needs to do a couple of things to 'get better' at what they do:

1) Better align services with customer needs and expectations. Supermailboxes and less frequent deliveries (2 days a week?), reduce the cost and improve package delivery services within North America.
2) Make process improvements that can come from technological change and investments.
3) Do a better job partnering, many of their partner relationships crash or burn. They could be a cost-effective last-mile carrier for UPS, DHL, Amazon, FedEx to households anywhere in Canada.
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You should send these ideas to CP as an outside labour consultant and see what they say!
 
sburns said:
They could still improve this whole process, even with manual labour. CP had a plan to convert depots with improved efficiency by having the mail presorted by depot clerks. This way LC's can pick up and go.

The only mail currently partially sorted is your typical lettermail.
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Sooo…. CP is very much pushing this concept. They call it SSD - Separate Sort and Delivery. To accomplish this, they will make our routes even longer. As if 24km a day of walking isn’t enough.
 
BigEvilDoer said:
You should send these ideas to CP as an outside labour consultant and see what they say!
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If you can find a copy of the CPC employee mag from summer 2012, I’m on the cover. I made a suggestion for improving their USA small packet delivery time. They implemented the idea, it cut the delivery average from 28 days to 7 days with no cost increase, the story is inside the msg.

I made the suggestion after doing a plant tour in Mississauga.
 
Evoex said:
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If you have a community mailbox and once you get use to it then less than daily mail delivery is no issue.
We only check ours once per week if that.
99% of our bills, statements etc. are emailed or online.
 
GreyGhost said:
I was shocked that the solution proposed by the union was more work and staffing to fix the problems /s
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Since when has a ridiculous suggestion from anything governmental been a shock. I'd be shocked if they came up with something that made sense.

I would prefer once or twice a week home delivery to community mail boxes. I had the community one at the shop and they got broken into several times a year. Until they were repaired we had to pick up mail at an inconvenient site for a week or two, We had to verify that paperwork hadn't been corrupted. Credit cards and cheques were the targets for the thieves.

Go once a week home delivery and make businesses using snail mail allow a few more days grace for payment.
 
I'd be happy with once a week delivery. Less "get off my lawn" rage.

Still want it put in the mailbox hanging beside my front door, though.
 
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