Someway, somehow, deliveries can still make it directly to our doors

BETWEEN THE SO-CALLED SUPER mailboxes (there ain’t nothing super about them) and the lawn-flinging of plasti-wrapped flyer packages, the deliveries actually coming to your door today are most likely to be parcels.

It might be FedEx or UPS or even Canada Post, but thanks to online shopping, business is booming in the door-to-door delivery sector.

We love online shopping for the price and the convenience, so it’s ironic that some providers, Canada Post among them, have been keen to move away from personal delivery, the Trudeau government’s moratorium notwithstanding.

Regular post is going the way of the dodo, of course. Between electronic billing and the use of email for personal correspondence, the days of envelopes and stamps have passed. (We may someday see some hipster uptick in letter writing should fountain pens or custom stationery catch on, but you get the point.)

The volume of what Canada Post calls “transaction mail” – letters, bills and statements – fell by 286 million pieces in 2016 by comparison to 2015. That’s a drop of 7.8 per cent. Revenues fell by $153 million, or 4.8 per cent, over the year before.

Overall, such deliveries account for about $3 billion of the agency’s $6.2 billion in revenues in 2016, the 49 per cent down from 53 per cent five years earlier. The trend is obvious. If not for growth in parcel delivery, Canada Post would be mired in red ink instead of posting a $55-million profit last year.

In 2016, revenue from parcels increased by $92 million or 5.6 per cent compared to 2015. At 195 million, volumes increased by 14 million pieces or 7.7 per cent compared to the year before, with domestic shipments up 11 million pieces or nine per cent. Inbound parcels volumes – from the U.S. and the rest of the world – increased by 8.4 per cent compared to 2015, driven particularly by strong growth from Asia Pacific countries.

Seeing traditional revenues drying up was one of the factors in moving to community mailboxes – it’s all about cutting costs, not the convenience of residents.

If you’re one of those people still receiving mail at your door, chances are you want to keep that service. Polls consistently show that. It’s why Trudeau campaigned on halting plans to switch yet more neighbourhoods, along with currying favour with certain union elements.

While some of us are fine with the changes, others yearn for the postal services of the past.

Trouble is, the volume of mail continues to decline, leading to losses the corporation says need to be countered by cuts in services, particularly when it comes to letter mail.

Packages will continue to be delivered to customers’ doors, as that’s where the money is.

With its current labour costs, Canada Post argues it has a much higher cost structure than its competitors in the private sector have, a situation it calls unsustainable.

Not surprisingly, that model doesn’t cut it for the unions representing postal workers.

While much less militant than in the past, the postal unions have made few friends over the years. With animosity towards public sector unions growing, postal workers will have trouble finding sympathy for their plight, even among those who’d like to keep their home delivery service intact.

Demographics are not in the workers’ favour, as many younger people have grown up with community mailboxes. More to the point, the younger generations simply don’t use letter mail – it’s existence is irrelevant to them. That they don’t write letters goes without saying, but electronic replacements also extend to bills, cheques and a host of other paperwork that used to be the mainstay of letter carriers. Today, all of that is largely irrelevant.

Canada Post’s letter delivery isn’t helped by the large hikes in the cost of stamps. Each increase makes the price tag of electronic alternatives – free – that much more appealing.

One thing that does continue to appear is junk mail, either at your doorstop or crammed into your “super” mailbox slot.

From neighbourhood circulars about garage sales to the slick sales letters, all kinds of unsolicited advertising arrives in our mailboxes. While these items are not annoying in the sense of telemarketing calls to your phone, there is still the ecological impact to consider: the tonnes of paper manufactured and shipped around before ending up at your door.

Most of the flyers dropped at my home are seeds cast on asphalt: they will bear no fruit. I’d guess 90 per cent of them travel directly from mailbox to blue box. To be sure, I do pluck out the occasional flyer for perusal, but I’m not the target household distributors have in mind.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this, but I’m equally sure plenty of people find flyers useful, perhaps even enjoyable. I know plenty of people – and likely you do, too – who pore over the regular offerings, including the grocery stores. And we get phone calls here at the office when people don’t get the flyer package with the Observer, for instance.

I suppose it would be useful if we each received only those flyers of interest to us. Advertisers would like that too, as it could save them significant amounts of money. That’s not always a workable option, however. In the absence of such targeting methods, perhaps it’s best to have the choice of which to peruse and which to pitch.

My real issue is with sales letters, the ones that often arrive with “addressed admail” in the indicium (the ones attempting to look like real mail, or personal letters). That mail always goes directly into the recycling bin. While flyers and catalogues can be informative and even entertaining, the direct mail pitches are never worth my time. You know

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the ones I’m talking about, the letters from banks, insurers and utilities (Bell seems to be especially fond of this method, especially since I no longer use their services). Charities, too, are among the worst offenders.

I’m absolutely certain that anything requiring me to open the envelope and read through several pages and perhaps a brochure is nothing that’s going to benefit me.

But it’s the volume, not the content that is of interest to Canada Post. Now, if only they and other delivery services were as concerned about convenience and customer service ...