plz splain?
Gladly.
From William C Woolridge's 'Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man'
First even before there was a USA there was a private postal service. in 1710 The King had started his official and "legal" service, which charged high rates and was unsatisfactory. Then there were the illegal postal services. These riders would carry whatever they could for rates at least half of what the King wanted. They were hard to catch and when caught would not be convicted. And those that tried to catch them were subject to tar and feathers. This situation went on for some 60 years.
from 1770 to 1839 there does not appear to be many private carriers and the then United States Post Office may have been doing a good enough job to kept competetion at bay. Or it might be the historical record is incomplete.
Then in 1839, a sickly man named William F. Harnden who was looking to create a mostly stress-free job for himself invested his savings in a carpet bag and started the first American express-parcel company. He only set out to create an express parcel service not a letter carrying service as he did not want to break the law. But merchants begged him to carry letters for them..and soon he did. And soon after that the government made him a private contractor for the Boston-NY route. He carried about $20,000 dollars worth of "legal" mail in 30 months which is thought to have been just around half of the total mail he carried in that time.
Harnden had competitors including on Alvin Adams, whose market cap for his postal business was one million dollars in 1854.
One of Harnden's employees was one Henry Wells who later joined forces with a Mr. Fargo...and expanded private mail service to all manner of frontier cities, including Buffalo NY. Wells started a Philly-NY route and charged 6 cents a letter, the gov charged 25 cents and could not be counted on the get the mail there on time. The government would arrest his men and the local citizens would bail them out.
Trying to stay on the right side of the law Wells-Fargo would carry letters in pre-stamped and thus taxed envelopes and people would still pay them to carry the letters. On the NY-San Fran route individuals would pay a premium of 9/12 cents so that they could avoid having the USPO carry their mail.
Another man who started a private mail business was Lysander Spooner, maybe you've heard of him. He also just nailed why government types do not like competition. Saying "government functionaries, secure in the enjoyment of warm nests, large salaries, official honors and power and presidential smiles, feel few quickening impulses to labor."
In 1843 in Boston there was a list in a local magazine that had 240 express companies with a Boston office on it. Every hotel would take mail to be delivered. The USPO tried many things but few cared about the laws that were passed.
Blood's New York Express was another company, it could be counted on to routinely make four deliveries and five collections in one day. This was in 1843! How many routine collections and deliveries to a single place daily does the USPS make these days?
In the 1845 the USPO was near extinction. In 5 years private carriers had captured up to half of all the mail service. The USPO finally responded with harsher laws and the three-cent rate which I do not remember but maybe some of our more seasoned ASP'rs might.
In 1883 the end finally came. In large cities private carriers were again flourishing and again outdoing the USPO. Congress had finally gotten around to closing all manner of loopholes and one Elihu Root won a case against a Rastus Ransom in front of the SCOTUS and the USPO later the USPS still holds the monopoly it was awarded from that case. The judges ruled that "A calamitous reduction" in USPO revenues would be the result if competition were allowed. They, in effect, admitted that the USPO could not compete.
So there is a basic look at private mail carrying in the US. I think it proves that we could eliminate the USPS and not notice any decline in service. Rates, yes, service, no.
