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Speaker 1: This is taking stock the US Postals Service. They deliver
Speaker 1: five hundred and thirteen million pieces of mail a day.
Speaker 1: That's more than forty of the world's total volume. They
Speaker 1: have the largest fleet of trucks more post offices in
Speaker 1: the combined retail outlets of McDonald's, Starbucks, and Walmart. We're
Speaker 1: gonna talk to the author of a new book neither
Speaker 1: snow now a rain, Devin Leonard. He'll be joining us
Speaker 1: right now. Let's go to Catherine Cowdy in the Bloomberg
Speaker 1: newsroom for a Bloomberg business flash. Thank you, Pam and Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: Taking Stock is brought to you by s c I.
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Speaker 1: Slash imagine well. The stock market is clawing back some
Speaker 1: of the ground at lost last week. The benchmarks are advancing,
Speaker 1: helped by games and banks and consumer discretionary companies. Traders
Speaker 1: have lowered their expectations for higher interest rates in June
Speaker 1: after day to show manufacturing slowed last month. Tom lee
Speaker 1: Had of research at fund Strat Global Advisor says the
Speaker 1: SMP five foundered can still post double digit games this year.
Speaker 1: Click economic data has improved um. The technicals are certainly
Speaker 1: a lot stronger, but I think the hyably the single
Speaker 1: easiest thing to focus on is is how good conditions
Speaker 1: are in credit markets. Uh, you know, high yields on
Speaker 1: track to have a double duty here, and I think
Speaker 1: that's all equity investors need to know. Stocks basically followed.
Speaker 1: We tag the markets every fifteen minutes throughout the trading day.
Speaker 1: Down industrial average is up one points the game of
Speaker 1: six ten seven percent, trading at seventeen thousand, eight D
Speaker 1: two smps I found it up fourteen point seven tenths
Speaker 1: of a percent to two thousand seventy nine. The Nazak
Speaker 1: is up thirty two points two thirds of a percent,
Speaker 1: trading at forty eight oh seven less Texas in do
Speaker 1: we need of crude oil? Down a dollar eighteen a
Speaker 1: barrel two point six percent to forty four seventy four.
Speaker 1: SPI gold is up sixty cents announced to twelve nine,
Speaker 1: and the Tenure Treasury is down eight thirty seconds, with
Speaker 1: the YELD at one point eight six percent. Among today's
Speaker 1: top business stories, constructions spending increased in March to its
Speaker 1: highest level in more than eight years. Games in home
Speaker 1: building and non residential construction offset a drop in government projects.
Speaker 1: The Commerce Department reported construction spending increased three tens of
Speaker 1: a percent in March after a one percent increase in February.
Speaker 1: And now let's get an update of some of the
Speaker 1: other stories were following today on Bloomberg Radio. Catherine, thank
Speaker 1: you from the Bloomberg News roommin Mark Crumpton. This news
Speaker 1: update is brought to you by Mercedes Ben's outstanding offers
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Speaker 1: dot com for details. Today, campaigning in Indiana ahead of
Speaker 1: tomorrow's primary, Democrat Bernie Sanders is making it clear he's
Speaker 1: trying to persuade the party's so called super delegates to
Speaker 1: switch allegiances. He told supporters in Evansville, Beating the Republican
Speaker 1: Party has to be the priority. The point that we're
Speaker 1: gonna make to the super delegates in an area where
Speaker 1: Hillary Clinton and I agree, and that is, it will
Speaker 1: be a tragedy for this country if we end up
Speaker 1: with a Donald Trump or some other Republican of the
Speaker 1: White House. Mr Trump is once again leveling charges that
Speaker 1: his party is working to block his nomination. The bosses
Speaker 1: are trying to run it. You know, it's a Ridge party.
Speaker 1: It's a whole rigs situation. The bosses like an Arizona
Speaker 1: the busses. I win Arizona in a landslot. I beat
Speaker 1: Pruce so badly it's almost ridiculous. And then the bosses
Speaker 1: have delegates to have a delicate, a crooked delegate system
Speaker 1: where the going and may try and get delegate so
Speaker 1: they can play games. New York Senator Chuck Schumer is
Speaker 1: calling for federal probe into an outdoor advertising company's latest
Speaker 1: effort to target billboard ads to specific consumers. Schumer is
Speaker 1: dubbed Clear Channel outdoor Americans so called radar programs spying
Speaker 1: billboards wanting the service may violate privacy rights. Global News
Speaker 1: twenty four hours a day, powered by our two hundred
Speaker 1: journalists in more than one hundred fifty news bureaus around
Speaker 1: the world from the Bloomberg News Room by Mark Crumpton. Katherine,
Speaker 1: Thank you. Now, let's get a quick update of the
Speaker 1: equity benchmark Stale Industrial averages up one hundred three points
Speaker 1: at seventeen thousand, eight hundred seventy six. Smp F I
Speaker 1: founded up fourteen points to two thousand, seventy nine. NASDAC
Speaker 1: higher by thirty points, is trading at forty eight oh five.
Speaker 1: And that's a Bloomberg Business flash. You're listening to taking
Speaker 1: stock with pim Box at Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 1: The US Postal Service, it is much maligned, but yet
Speaker 1: it does deliver of the world's total mail volume. And
Speaker 1: if you rely on Amazon to purchase your goods, chances
Speaker 1: are the US Postal Service has a hand in getting
Speaker 1: them to your door. Here to tell us everything about
Speaker 1: the US Postal Services Devin Leonard, reporter for Bloomberg Business Week,
Speaker 1: and he's here to tell us about his new book
Speaker 1: entitled Neither Snow nor Rain. A landmark century spanning social, political,
Speaker 1: and economic history of the United States Post Office. Devin,
Speaker 1: always a pleasure. Thanks for coming out, Thank you, and
Speaker 1: congratulations on the book. Thanks well, well, you know, it
Speaker 1: came out of an article that I wrote for bloomber
Speaker 1: Business Week in two thousand and eleven. It was a
Speaker 1: cover story called the End of Mail, and that got
Speaker 1: a ton of response, and it led led to doing
Speaker 1: this book, which is, I guess, not just the end
Speaker 1: of mail, but the beginning of mail too. It goes
Speaker 1: on the way back to the ancient Abyssinians and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, two thousand BCS. So I was gonna make
Speaker 1: you say a motto, I guess of letter carriers everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, neither ring nor snow, nor gloom of night
Speaker 1: and so on. But tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: your researches for the book, and then we'll get into
Speaker 1: some of the things you found out. Well, it was really,
Speaker 1: really fascinating. I I and I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time talking to former postmaster generals um and I spent
Speaker 1: a bunch of time in Washington. I went out to
Speaker 1: Detroit and looked at the archives with the National Letter
Speaker 1: Carriers Association, you know, the union for the letter carriers
Speaker 1: and also the postal workers side the clerks union. I
Speaker 1: guess they have a big archive in New York too
Speaker 1: that I sent her researcher too was actually my son
Speaker 1: who did a lot of work on this too. But
Speaker 1: it's just there's a lot of reading, a lot of talking,
Speaker 1: a lot of studying, and the whole thing is pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1: And you went into the back rooms of a lot
Speaker 1: of the postal service operations. Correct, yes, I have. I
Speaker 1: wish I could go to go to even more, but
Speaker 1: I've been to a bunch of them in New York
Speaker 1: and it's and and it's just really interesting because what
Speaker 1: everybody tells you it is, you know, is that you
Speaker 1: have all these letter carriers pointing to these stacks of mail,
Speaker 1: and they're just saying they used to be three or
Speaker 1: four or five times is higher, and and everybody's walking
Speaker 1: around with much less mail in their bags, and and
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's it's disappearing, even though there's
Speaker 1: they're still they still delivered. I guess a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty four billion pieces. That's down from uh two hundred
Speaker 1: and thirteen billion just a decade ago. So um, so
Speaker 1: you know, the future of the postal services kind of uh,
Speaker 1: in in doubt, in jeopardy. So now there are people
Speaker 1: I don't know any of them, but I do know
Speaker 1: people that they love to sort of heap abuse on
Speaker 1: the US Postal Service. Tell us a little bit about this.
Speaker 1: In some words, just lumbering bureaucracy. But you say it's not,
Speaker 1: it's it's efficient. Well, it depends on how you want
Speaker 1: to look at it. I mean, clearly, clearly they are
Speaker 1: lumbering sometimes, but they deliver more mail per employee than
Speaker 1: any other postals, you know, postal service in the world.
Speaker 1: So if you just look at efficiency, you know, you know,
Speaker 1: measured in in that way, there by far and away
Speaker 1: the most efficient postal service in the world are and
Speaker 1: in history, paying for your mail to be delivered has
Speaker 1: changed since the postal service began. Tell us a little
Speaker 1: history about the stamps and the postal service. No, I
Speaker 1: think that's one of the things that that I was
Speaker 1: fascinated by. You know what sort of led me want
Speaker 1: to write the book was that Pete, there was no
Speaker 1: home delivery for a long time. Everybody had to go
Speaker 1: to the post office to get them. Imagine what the
Speaker 1: lines were like then. I mean they're not so that,
Speaker 1: you know, they're pretty long now. But there's no home delivery,
Speaker 1: I guess, are very limited home delivery until the Civil
Speaker 1: War when Abraham Lincoln's Postmaster General, Montgomery Blair, he saw
Speaker 1: all these women, wives and girlfriends of soldiers just waiting
Speaker 1: and waiting for the post office for letters to come,
Speaker 1: and he just thought that that was wrong. So he
Speaker 1: started city delivery. And then and then John Wanamaker towards
Speaker 1: the end of the nineteenth century started pushing for rural
Speaker 1: free delivery, and and and that that uh that passed
Speaker 1: about a decade after you left. But but I guess
Speaker 1: all of those things are are relatively new, especially especially
Speaker 1: free rural delivery. For the longest time, people in uralaries
Speaker 1: still had to go to the post office even when
Speaker 1: there was home delivery in cities now, postal carriers used
Speaker 1: to make multiple deliveries a day. You say that in
Speaker 1: some places seven times a day, well, and there was
Speaker 1: there was at least twice a day delivery until uh nine,
Speaker 1: So for so from for most of the postal service
Speaker 1: history there were multiple deliveries a day. And in places
Speaker 1: like New York that you know there were as many
Speaker 1: as as seven deliveries. So no, it's just incredible. You
Speaker 1: just saw your your your mailman all the time, and
Speaker 1: you could send a letter in the morning and get
Speaker 1: a response in the afternoon. So who need the email?
Speaker 1: By law? You say, the US Postal Service has to
Speaker 1: visit every address in the country six days a week.
Speaker 1: Is that under threat? Well, it's under threat. It's sort
Speaker 1: of unsustainable because the problem is that the amount of
Speaker 1: mail is going down, but the number of addresses goes up.
Speaker 1: There are a million new addresses every year every time
Speaker 1: there's another housing development, and you know, that's a bunch
Speaker 1: of new mailboxes. So that's that's going to kill the
Speaker 1: Postal Service unless they unless they change they changed their
Speaker 1: business model, and they've been trying to do it, but
Speaker 1: Congressman left and so I just stand also that people
Speaker 1: trusted the postal Service so much that they actually sent
Speaker 1: their children through the postal system. I know that blows
Speaker 1: everybody's mind. No, I mean this was after after the
Speaker 1: Postal Service began delivering parcels, and that was in Uh.
Speaker 1: People just started sending all sorts of things to the
Speaker 1: mail just to see sort of you know, what they
Speaker 1: get away with. And there's some famous cases. A famous
Speaker 1: case in Idaho where the family sent there their young
Speaker 1: daughter May May Piersdorff was it was her name. Rather
Speaker 1: than buying a train ticket for it to go visit
Speaker 1: her grandmother, they went to the post office and paid
Speaker 1: fifty three cents uh to send her to sender in
Speaker 1: the mail the post the postmaster actually put the put
Speaker 1: the stance on her coat. They put on the train,
Speaker 1: and they took her to see her grandmother. And there
Speaker 1: you go, there you go. Devin Leonard, the author of
Speaker 1: the new book Neither Snow nor Rain, a History of
Speaker 1: the United States Postal Service. Bloomber Taking stock is brought
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