The Bogeyman Doesn't Wear Brown

The following is a postal perspective by PostCom President Gene Del Polito.

If Washington is anything, it's a rumor mill. Sometimes the rumors have a thread of true to them; many times, they don't. In Washington postal circles, the differences of opinion that have separated those who style themselves as "pro-postal" and those who represent "alternative" providers such as UPS often have been quite marked. The favorite jibe of many who have developed a distrust of UPS is not "What can Big Brown do for You?" (as a UPS commercial would put it) but rather, "What has Big Brown Done to you?"

Now only an idiot would deny that there is long, long history to the many facets of years worth of USPS-UPS struggles and debates, but you truly would have to be a blind man not to have noticed that the man who currently captains UPS' cruiser has been steering his company on a different course. As hard as it is for some to believe, gone are the days when UPS seemed to pride itself as the 900-pound gorilla who wouldn't hestitate for a second before it stomped the life out of any postal legislative proposal that wasn't of its own making. In fact, those who head UPS, in Atlanta AND in Washington, have been trying particularly hard NOT to juxtapose themselves into the limelight of the debate over the form and substance of recent postal reform proposals.

Much as it might surprise some, UPS actually is on the record with its support for last year's House and Senate postal reform bills. At the most recent meeting of the Board of Directors of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom), UPS senior executive Betty Amend reaffirmed UPS' support for reform as it has gotten under way in the 109th Congress.

For the past three years, UPS has served as a member of the PostCom Board along with some 50 others whose businesses are about the importance of mail as a vehicle for business commmunication and commerce. The company has learned from the experience, as have the many who can only conjure up some of the past's unpleasantness that marked the experience of those who use the Postal Service to ship product well as to grow their business by mail.

So let's give the old college try one more time.

If there is anyone haunting the halls of 109th Congress as postal reform gets underway, understand this: The bogeyman doesn't wear brown.