Saw this headline this morning about “US Post Office ends Sat service to save itself“. As a business this is not usually the type of thing that bodes well for ongoing customers and revenue. We have all known for a while that the post office was in trouble when it runs in the red year over year. Obviously there is a public good that needs to be served here but it is not sustainable.
This comes on the heels of comments like “That’s because Amazon, as best I can tell, is a charitable organization being run by elements of the investment community for the benefit of consumers.” This is probably unfair as many of the businesses that they run are long-term disruptive and the analysts have always had a love-hate relationship with Jeff Bezos.
My prediction is that as Amazon looks to expand it distribution network and footprint that they will look at the Post Service real estate and locations as an option. My hope is that this could be the beginning of some sort of public/private partnership that dramatically improves the efficiency of the US institution that is the post office. Saving the post office is going to take a bold thinking and actions. If anybody is crazy enough to try it, it is probably the Internet powerhouse that started out selling books on a crappy website and now powers the engine for half the known internet.
Silicon Valley Moneyball 
Or, when does the post office 100% outsource its operations to UPS?