US Postal Service Strikes Deal With Amazon For Sunday Deliveries

The U.S. Postal Service has struck a deal with ecommerce juggernaut Amazon to deliver the latter’s packages on Sundays, which seems to be the perfect way for both parties to benefit at the expense of the competition.

It’s no secret that the USPS has been in financial trouble for a while, and one idea for saving the agency money--ceasing delivery on Saturdays--seemed like a fruitless idea from the get go and would certainly be unpopular with consumers and businesses alike.

USPS HQ
USPS headquarters in D.C.

Increasing the reach of its services while also opening up a huge pipeline of products to be delivered is a much better idea. Everybody wants Sunday deliveries, and as a New York Times piece notes, neither FedEx nor UPS offer it, so the USPS would be swiping a lot of business from those companies. All those packages earmarked for Monday arrivals could be delivered a day earlier by the USPS.

The bad news for most of us is that the Sunday option will be limited to L.A. and the New York metro area, and even in 2014, it will only branch out to a few major cities such as Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix.