Privatize or downsize the USPS? Rural customers worry either option will hurt them

[Omaha Steve]

As a new postmaster general with ties to FedEx assumes control of the agency, postal workers and their customers are bracing for either scenario, especially as corporate America weighs in.

By Nick Loomis
July 17, 2025

Rural letter carrier Roger McDonald missed driving his 150-mile route outside Scottsbluff in western Nebraska earlier this year. He was injured in a serious car accident that kept him from mail delivery for three months. He had an appointment scheduled with the doctor who rebuilt his right hand on May 8, so he decided to do a dry run the day before in case he was cleared to return.

As the pavement turned to gravel on Crow Road, McDonald said long distances, low population density and poor infrastructure make rural delivery difficult and unprofitable. His point was soon proven. Among the route’s first stops are two mailboxes separated by a dilapidated bridge over an irrigation canal. Before the bridge was closed, it was a 50-yard trip between them, McDonald said at the first mailbox. He then drove nearly three miles to reach the second.

Under the universal service obligation, which mandates mail delivery to every address in the country, a rural letter carrier will drive more than 700 miles to serve those two households in a normal year.

“It’s never going to make financial sense,” said McDonald, 61, from the driver’s seat of his preferred delivery vehicle, a Dodge Caravan. “But that’s a big reason why the universal pricing system was generated. Because we knew we had to service every American’s home, not just the Americans’ homes that provide us a profit.”

FULL story: https://flatwaterfreepress.org/privatize-or-downsize-the-usps-rural-customers-worry-either-option-will-hurt-them/


Rural letter carrier Roger McDonald (left) catches up with Edgar Clemens in rural Gering, Neb., on May 9 — McDonald’s first day back on the route after three months of medical leave. McDonald said he loves the sense of community fostered by the Postal Service, which he fears would disappear if his route was curtailed by cutbacks or eliminated by privatization. Photo by Nick Loomis, The Midwest Newsroom