This delivery practice has probably been occurring for a while, but I'm just now catching up to it.
I ordered a portable hard drive from Amazon.com last week and tracked the free shipping through the FedEx tracking site.
The item was picked up at Phoenix by FedEx and shipped to Dallas. Another FedEx leg took it from Dallas to Midland. Then an interesting thing happened. When it arrived at Midland it got turned over to the USPS, i.e., dropped in the mail. And the ultimate deliverer was the USPS letter carrier who placed it in my mail box.
Both the FedEx and USPS tracking sites show the course the package took.
FedEx is simply paying the USPS postage fee so as not to have to drive all over town delivering small packages. Called FedEx SmartPost, it seems like a good utilization of resources by FedEx.
Whether the post office profits from this arrangement isn't known. The USPS is constantly held up to ridicule as a poorly run government program. But the problem is well known. It's shackled by pension commitments, handcuffed by union contracts, and manhandled by the lawmakers. Let it go and it could turn a profit.
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