[BogeyBoy]

Here's a little bit of info for you -

When the price of gas goes up 1 penny, it cost the postal service $8,000,000!

Five years ago the price of a stamp was 39 cents, today it is 44 cents.

Five years ago the price of a gallon of gas was about $1.75, today it is about $2.80 +/-, and we all know it was over $4.00 for a while.

The average family mails about 150 pieces of mail per year. So the change in rates from 2005 to now cost them about $7.50 per year.

The average car uses about 500 gallons of fuel per year, so now it cost you about $500 more for gas each year than it did in 2005. Now do the math - the postal service used 444 million gallons of fuel last year.

The USPS cannot add on a fuel surcharge (such as Fed Ex and United Parcel Service).

Some of these things are obviously out of the USPS control. They cannot raise rates unless approved through the Postal Rate Commission, which is a time consuming procedure.

One last little fact - last year the USPS cut workhours by 114 million.