I tweeted the other day that USPS should start installing street view cameras on their vehicles and selling the data as a new revenue stream. This made me think about a few other areas that USPS could make some positive changes.

1.) Exploring Street view more. You would collect the daily route imagery and store this in a data warehouse. Having data 6/7 days a week will be far more interesting than what Google currently captures. This data could be then sold off to many more parties and in various packages. – The obvious Full set of data can still be sold monthly or quarterly to mapping providers.
- I think parts of the data can be dispersed based on geographic location. Sold off for city planning / emergency response / crime fighting data to state and local entities. Think situational awareness.
- Finally you could sell even smaller chunks based on time to land developers that want to study a specific properties changes over time and monitor things like erosion and other ecological activity.
- All of these could be potential revenue generators.

Since the best practices and cost analysis “hard work” has already been done by several companies USPS can go into this with less risk.

2.) Virtual PO Box. This hit me the other day when I realized that my PO Box was about to expire. It is already inconvenient (30 minutes away near my old employer back in 2003) but I use it for rent checks and bills to retain some privacy from my tenants. I thought to myself, now I have three options: a.) Renew and keep driving 30 minutes to my post office box. b.) Cancel get a new PO Box closer to home and call ALL of my tenants / billers / etc to update their information. or c.) suck it up and let them all know where I really live, and again update everyone.

None of these options really are fun, but it got me thinking “there has to be an easier option”. It then struck me that USPS need to offer a virtual PO Box. This would just be a address that doesn’t actually physically exist but routes (behind the scenes) my mail to whatever address I give them. If you are familiar with Google Voice, it would work just about the same way. Certain billers would go to my office address, unknown mail could go my home, and junk mail could be sorted and sent to the trash can! When I move I don’t have to notify anyone BUT go onto USPS.com and change my delivery configuration.

The revenue stream would be two fold. First off USPS can charge an additional fee for this service monthly or yearly. Maybe $18 a month or $140 yearly. I would easily pay this. I shell out about 50 bucks a year on my current PO Box plus cost of travel, time etc. The could also sell off the business of maintaining and operating current PO Box locations to smaller businesses like Mailboxes etc, Fedex, USPS. This has to be a loss for their bottom line currently.

I know there are a few startups that are already doing this but I think they are doomed to fail. To be successful a company needs the size and scale of a USPS to truly pull this off. Not to mention, the trust issue of having a third party company handle your mail. USPS needs to change the game to stay alive. I hate mail but it is a necessary evil for a few more decades until this is all digital.