Try switching to hybrid vehicles.

The friggin' postal service is wanting to increase stamp prices AGAIN!! Did we not cover this just a few months ago in one of my posts? They want to hike it to 42 cents next May.

They're actually trying to blame it on the increased fuel prices this time. Fine. It costs too much to drive those little Jeeps around (or reimburse their people and contractors for driving their own cars)? Then issue your people the little number I alerted you all to last month. Give them ZAP Smart Cars! Who cares if they're fashionable? They'd be WORK vehicles! UPS doesn't concern themselves with whether their vans are in fashion.

Or better yet, switch to hybrid or electric cars, like the hideous golfcart thing GM markets, the GEM. Letter carriers (because you can't call them postmen anymore) drive the same short route everyday (short compared to some people's commutes or, say, the miles a Realtor has to drive every day). The distance they need to drive to deliver the mail would work just fine for one of these little things. And they're stopping constantly - they don't need a fast vehicle or something with some great acceleration ratio. And the Web site shows that some have little haulers on the back. They're perfect!

I realize this wouldn't change the cost of the planes and 18-wheelers that they have to use, but it'd have to make a dent. And considering how they're constantly falling behind both with their product (again, see my previous post about how I started doing auto-charges for some of my bills to decrease my bill-mailing costs) and their efficiency, they need to make some dents. Maybe those of us ponying up for those stamps would feel a little better about it if we saw them tooling around in electric cars and we could see that they're actually making some kind of attempt to control costs, not just passing expenses on to us. Grrrrrr.