SMART NEWS

The USPS Will Make Sunday Deliveries Just for Amazon

The US Postal Service announced that it would make special Sunday deliveries for Amazon.com customers

Contributor

November 11, 2013

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” So goes the U.S. Postal Service motto. It just doesn’t apply on Sundays. Unless you’re ordering from Amazon. The Postal Service announced that it would make special Sunday deliveries for Amazon.com customers.

For the next year the Sunday deliveries will only be available in New York City and Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles Times:

The postal service’s Sunday package delivery business has been very small, but the arrangement with Amazon for two of the retailer’s larger markets, Los Angeles and New York, should boost work considerably.

To pull off Sunday delivery for Amazon, the postal service plans to use its flexible scheduling of employees, Brennan said. It doesn’t plan to add employees, she said.

Because Amazon is so huge, other vendors will have a hard time competing with this new Sunday offering. But the USPS is hoping to cut more deals like this one, according to the New York Times:

The Postal Service said it expected to make more such deals with other merchants, seeking a larger role in the $186 billion e-commerce market. Amazon.com would not say if it would try to arrange Sunday deliveries with other parcel carriers.

This deal alone won’t save the USPS, which continues to bleed money (about $32 billion since 2007) and see declines in letters, but it might keep them from going under for a bit longer.