Post Office Could Save $100 M/YR Using Rail

The Post Office Inspector General finds that significant savings can be achieved by using railroads once again.

Key findings include the following:
 Intermodal rail has become an industry standard for efficient long-distance freight
transportation and is a best practice that could cut postal transportation costs
dramatically.
 The OIG estimates that in the short term, shifting a portion of mail volume to
intermodal rail could yield cost savings of about $100 million per year without
changes to the Postal Service’s network.
 By realigning its processing and transportation network and strategically
recommitting to the use of intermodal rail, the Postal Service could save
significantly more in the long run.
 Because railroad-owned logistics companies now work to facilitate the use of
intermodal rail for its customers, moving to intermodal rail would be easier for
postal management than in the past.
 Competitors such as UPS and FedEx have become major users of freight rail
over the last decade just as the Postal Service has moved away from it. In fact,
UPS is now the single largest user of intermodal rail service in the United States.
J.B. Hunt, one of the Postal Service’s largest highway trucking contractors, now
earns about 60 percent of its revenues from intermodal rail operations.

http://www.uspsoig.gov/foia_files/RARC-WP-12-013.pdf

I found the idea that the recent focus on rail-based intermodal could work in the USPS' favor ironic - weren't the mail contracts some of most consistent and profitable that railroads had back in the day? Were there any attempts to get in on the intermodal/trailer-train movement when it was getting started in the 50s and 60s before the decision was made to kill the mail contracts and RPOs?

I'm not holding my breath for the return of dedicated mail and express trains, but I could imagine a test run sooner rather than later considering their recent budget troubles.

"I'm not holding my breath"

You don't need to. "Express" trains already run... for UPS.

Kilgore Trput wrote:

Kilgore Trout wrote:I found the idea that the recent focus on rail-based intermodal could work in the USPS' favor ironic - weren't the mail contracts some of most consistent and profitable that railroads had back in the day? Were there any attempts to get in on the intermodal/trailer-train movement when it was getting started in the 50s and 60s before the decision was made to kill the mail contracts and RPOs?

I'm not holding my breath for the return of dedicated mail and express trains, but I could imagine a test run sooner rather than later considering their recent budget troubles.

The PRR had a mail amd express networl that seemed to morph constantly over the years.

Back in the 60's, when I was a teenager and fisrt exploring on my own, the westbound mainstay was train No 9, listed in the ETT's as simply the Railway Express Agency; it passed through Harrisburg arooud 10 AM, and usually ran about 50 carsi mosl;y insulated and ventilated REA boxes. A second move, No 35, ran overnight Harrisburg-Pittsburgh. Eastbound, PRR ran something listed in the ETT's as the Southwestern Mail, No.12, and a second overnight "clean-up" train, designated No.18. I caught it one cold night in early 1968 for an early-AM trip to Newark; things froze up in Philly, and we made the rest of the trip in the cabin car (caboose, to the junior members) and it was obviously a ride I'll never forget.

The rest of the service revolved around regluarly schedled trains like the Duquesne and Juniata, and almost certainly on similar schedules west of Pittsburgh, and I can attest that it was well-utilized. Pennsy was big enough that it could shift traffic around as the demand fluctuated. And a 1946 Official Guide in my library lists a daylight westboubd mail and express move simillar to No.9 for the NYC.

During the earlist days of Amtrak, one of the New York-Pittsburgh schedlues was retained for a couple of months, presubably to facilitate the changeover; PC still had an RPO on the corridor that lasted for a couple of years more, but I don't know if that was a factor here. PC did go to storage-mail not long after the NYC=PRR merger' this was handled on symbol freights designated as MAIL9-10-11-12, using former NYC Flexi-Van containers.

At any rate, with UPS now clearly the dominant player, I wouldn't look for a revival of rail mail.