Interesting Article On the end of =a special low rate that allowed people to ship printed material in a 66-pound bag overseas by boat. Now the bags — called M-bags — can go air mail only, and that’s nearly four times more than the sea rate. Yvonne Yoerger, spokeswoman for the U.S. Postal Service in Washington, D.C., said low demand forced elimination of the ship-by-sea economy rate, which accounted for 2.7 percent of U.S. Postal Service international mail in 2006.
“The global network of surface transportation is decreasing,” she said.
Now the only available option through the Postal Service is air mail.
Charitable groups also are affected.
This is really bad
The postal service shouldn’t be allowed to give up that service. So many publishers and donors to good causes overseas use the M-bag method to transport heavy books; who’s going to want to fly a case of books or ten or twenty cases of books to the Philippines or Namibia or Peru? The big wholesalers can afford to ship books with a customs broker via commercial shipping, containers etc., but the little guys cannot afford it. The U.S.P.S. has got to be one of the worst systems in the civilized world, and raising the postal rate each year hasn’t made it any better. Any one been the the P.O. lately to send a package? When ‘parcel post’ and ‘priority class’ packages are only a few cents difference, they’re really not giving us much of an option. The service is bad and probably, next thing you know media mail will go bye-bye.
More a UPU than USPS issue
A number of countries are discontinuing sea mail M-Bag service. The processing of mail has become more automated even in historically unmechanized countries such as Kenya and the Ivory Coast.
Remember too that M-bags have to clear customs just like all other mail, yet the amount of surface mail entering many foreign seaports is very low and since it is surface mail there is no rush, it may sit for quite some time before final entry.
I have sent some books to Rome using M-bags and it took almost three months, so the savings (~$18 vs 46 for air M-bag) is there, but if you really want something to read the thirty seven cents per day of waiting may not be worth it.
Oh, and this change was posted in the Federal Register, and at the USPS.GOV website for comment. I didn’t comment on it (although I did comment on another USPS rate change). Commenting on the proposed rule is much more effective than complaining about it after the fact.
Improve the quality of what is sent
I have run into numerous charity groups that want to ship books to third world countries to be helpful. When you look in the boxes of books you see a mix of romance novels, 1950’s business books, and other crap. Why the USPS should be subsidizing this folly is beyond me.
In regards to small publishers that can not afford to ship things. Tough shit. Why the USPS should be subsidizing small publishers is also beyond me. Maybe for International shipping all the small publishers should pool their shipments to reduce cost instead of asking for a handout.
Re:Improve the quality of what is sent
I can see where that would be a problem. The donations to the public library where I worked were frequently junk. Only 5 or 10 percent were worth keeping for the book sale, even fewer were worthwhile for the collection.
Fedex has a great 25kg box that it will ship at a reduced rate, it even supplies the box. If a shipment is large it can certainly be sent by sea through any number of other freight forwarders.
If they shipped 70 thirty kilo M-bags in one month to beat the rate change. Well that is more than two tons of books(4620 lbs). That would cost (based on the old surface rates) $60.85 per bag. That is about a buck a pound. I can get an LTL rate via sea to Russia for a lot less than that if they planned ahead and combined shipments.
IPA and ISAL are still available as well which can provide a much cheaper rate than plain M-bag service as well. The M-bag for ISAL starts at $1.60 per pound. To Russia it is 2.35 per pound. ISAL takes mail from the US in M-bags and enters it into the mail stream in the foreign destination, it takes 4-7 days. IPA is a similar but quicker (first class) option that is at the M-bag rate to Russia at $4.40 per pound.
There are any number of postal consolidators who do this every day for thousands of companies. All it takes is an understanding of postal regulations. The International Mail Manual is online.