The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the official views of policies of the Association for Postal Commerce.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) continues to project a mediocre financial end to a very dismal year. The year-to-date accumulated loss is expected to exceed a billion dollars, and postal officials have been trumpeting their efforts to eke some savings out from their various programs. That's a laudable goal, but there's more that can be done besides a little eking.

If the Postmaster General and the postal Governors are really interested in cutting out some fat, then they should take a closer look at some of the Postal Service's very loudly trumpeted "e-commerce" initiatives. And a good place to start is by looking at the Postal Service's Mailing Online folly.

The Postal Service's pursuit of hybrid mail (i.e., the electronic transmission of messages to near-destination facilities that subsequently are converted into printed communications that are entered into and delivered through the mail) has been akin to the alchemist's pursuit of the philosophers' stone--the magical piece of something or other that could turn base metals into incorruptible gold. Unfortunately, the Postal Service has enjoyed about as much success as a medieval alchemist. The only difference is that the Postal Service's pursuit has been considerably more wasteful.

For instance, in a report to the Postal Rate Commission (PRC), the Postal Service noted that it spent during accounting periods one through six some $5,300,000 in the pursuit of some $56,000 in postage. Quite a return on investment. There are few businesses in America (thankfully) that would be willing to sustain the kind of losses the USPS has in pursuing this dog of a venture.

Now, don't get me wrong. There is a future in hybrid mail. It's just that it's not in the Postal Service's creation of a soup-to-nuts hybrid mail system. The plain and simple fact is that the U.S. Postal Service is not now and never has been structured to be a real business. The Postal Service hasn't the faintest idea how to go about creating, implementing, and marketing a program such as hybrid mail to the point of profitability.

To make matters worse, the Postal Service's presence in this arena as a hybrid mail provider has deleteriously affected the development of hybrid mail as a business communication alternative. Private sector businesses find it very hard to relate to the USPS as a partner, while the Postal Service is off behaving like a competitor. As long as hybrid mail requires the hand delivery of a hard copy message, private sector providers have no alternative to the Postal Service as their last-mile deliverer. But who in their right mind is interested in inviting into the inner most realms of their business and marketing planning someone who has shown a propensity to move about like a bull in a china shop? Consequently, the Postal Service denies itself the opportunity to capitalize on the ability and interest of the private sector to develop this segment of the marketplace.

The Postal Service does have a role in the hybrid mail business. Its core mission is the delivery of hard-copy messages. It's main interest should be in delivering the hard-copy messages that a hybrid mail system can create. It should want the postage that hybrid mail could make possible. But that's a far cry from wanting to take on the role of manufacturing these messages, particularly when there are ample private sector interests who are willing to risk private (rather than ratepayer) capital to determine whether hybrid mail has any real marketing and communication value. Instead of pursuing pipe dreams, it should use more wisely the regulatory tools it has at its disposal to help test whether an American hybrid mail system can be made a success.

In an earlier piece, I argued that it's long past time for the Postal Service to recognize that single-piece and bulk First-Class Mail are distinct enough to warrant separate subclass recognition. I've argued also that the creation of an electronic dropship option within an aggressively priced bulk First-Class subclass could provide the impetus that's needed to spur private sector marketers to see if there's any hybrid mail gold out there to be mined. If the private sector succeeds in creating a vibrant hybrid mail market, the Postal Service gains by being able to collect the postage associated with hard-copy message delivery. If the mother lode turns out to be a fool's gold harvest, then the Postal Service will have lost not a thing. No marketing dollars will have been poured down the drain, and not a penny would have been squandered on any hardware or software development systems.

It's time for the Postal Service to stop the madness and stop the waste. Postal ratepayers' dollars are earned at too high a price to justify this kind of folly. It's time to end the ill-fated Mailing Online experiment, and get on with facilitating a more creative and more profitable development of the hybrid mail market.