To answer Alan, there will be a truck to take that load. I suppose what you are getting at, is that perhaps they moved an empty trailer to point B, so that it would be available to take a load back up to point A. Which, on the surface, might seem to make sense. However, the trailer is my company trailer, and I did not need to stop at point A to accomplish the mission, nor did I need to aquire paperwork on that empty load, or have the Post Office seal my empty trailer. Indeed, I could have hauled an actual load down here for someone else to accomplish that mission, and done so more efficiently. (Now, I'm starting to touch on commentary from others)
As it happens, I will be taking another USPS run. But, when we got to point B, we backed the empty trailer to the dock, some official confirmed that the trailer was empty, and that was it. Dispatch then had us drop the empty at a private shipper for completely unrelated duty. We were then instructed to go get a different empty trailer for our next USPS run. By the way, the next run will not take us back to where we just left.
Had the particular branch of the post office, that we brought the original empty trailer to, simply needed an empty trailer, there were plenty of them closer, complete with tractors and drivers. They sure didn't need us.
Another thing, speaking to the logistics of it, the parent company of my company also has a broker service, which is fairly common in the industry. This means that, even if my company was unable to send an empty trailer to receive a load, my company, through their own broker service, would have found someone to accommodate that.
All this is basically to say, there was absolutely no good reason for the USPS to pay for my truck to deadhead a 1300 mile trip. It was a complete and total waste, and would have been even if we had gotten there and gotten loaded with mail heading right back to point A. The fact that we aren't going back to the same place, and won't even use the same trailer, just adds to the absurdity of the whole thing.
I, at least, made a profit off of this exercise in asininity. Y'all paid for it, in a sense. I realize that the USPS is, theoretically, self sufficient. But, we all know that they've been operating at a loss for quite some time, and are being subsidized by tax dollars.
I didn't just start this thread to vent; I wanted to point out another area of government waste.
Side note: TBH told head lady in charge, at USPS, that she was delivering a load of Bureaucrat Brains. Head lady in charge was NOT amused. She must have been an upwardly mobile bureaucrat, herself. Wish I had been awake for that.
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