Virginia Gun Owners Forum - VGOF

So, I wake up a little while ago, and realized that the truck is moving, which suggests to me that we got a new load while I was sleeping.

I ask TBH what was going on, and find out that the United States Postal Service is paying my company, to pay us, to pull an empty trailer on a 1300 mile trip. There's even paperwork for this load of Government IQ. Apparently, the receiving post office will view the paperwork, look in the back of the empty trailer, nod approvingly, and say, "Ahh, it is true that there was no mail to be sent from the shipping post office today."

I know that if I'm pulling empty trailers for the Post Office, so are other trucks. I just don't know how frequently it happens.

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No wonder the USPS is always running such a LARGE deficit.

TBH indicated to me, shortly after I posted this, that the girl at the Post Office that handled this "load", said that she sends out empty trucks all the time.

Normally, I don't care; I get paid the same, regardless. But, stupid government expenditures aggravate me.

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Our Tax $$$$'s at work !

Question: What if there's mail coming the other direction?

if it wasn't for the US/State/Local governments needing an 'official delivery service' the USPS would have been put out to pasture years ago.

Wasteful, but maybe decoys? Just trying to wrap my twisted mind around this one. I guess I could see it if they needed an empty at a specific location, but why not just wait for the next normal, or get the closest one.

Rualert wrote:I guess I could see it if they needed an empty at a specific location, but why not just wait for the next normal, or get the closest one.

Taking one from a different place leaves one place short. Not sending one, leaves one place short and another with extra. At a national scale, this is actually a rather difficult resource allocation problem. It would require constant real-time optimization, and would require having to re-task trucks and drivers constantly; which would mean trucks and drivers getting a trip canceled, and having to have drivers and trucks more or less on standby to show up on demand. Couldn't really plan long-term. Seems inefficient on a macro scale but might actually be less costly in the long run, since bidding out regular runs likely gets you a better price.*

*Not really familiar with the over the road industry. I am mainly thinking from the viewpoint of an engineer who has come face-to-face with resource allocation/shuffling/optimization problems on several occasions. Can turn into a rather sticky problem very quickly.

That said.... my own eye-rolling story...

I met a semi-retired trucker once who had gotten a call to run a truck-load of potatoes from East Grand Forks, MN to some procurement site in Texas. He rolled in, and as they were processing the paperwork, casually asked where all those potatoes were going. The response was, that this particular batch was destined for the Grand Forks Air Force base (about 15 miles down the road from where they were loaded)!

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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Quote:(SHMIV): 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. /Quote:

That, right there is funny as hell. I agree with your assessment regarding all the waste. Never could figure out why they do what they do, other than to burn our money. I also agree with the thoughts that real time, or near real time access to the trailers empty or otherwise is tough, but like SHMIV said the brokers have gotten very good at making sure they have a needed resource, or find it as close to where it's needed as they can. These clowns just don't use the most efficient methods and cost us all more money. And does anyone why a simple stamp keeps going up in price...

a load of Bureaucrat Brains

TBH is a keeper SHMIV!