Eggheadedness at the Postal Service

The USPS is driving up egg prices.

Photo by Jakub Kapusnak on Unsplash

Now that Easter is behind us, hopefully egg prices finally come back down to Earth. But, thanks in part to cuckoo U.S. Postal Service (USPS) policies, that may not happen anytime soon. Here’s an excerpt from a recent piece I wrote on the subject:

Thanks to a new $15 “Live Animal & Perishable Handling Fee” for Priority Mail, getting ahold of eggs has gotten a lot pricier. While it’s important for USPS package prices to reflect underlying delivery costs, consumers have gotten preciously little guidance as to how this extra fee revenue will be spent.

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Amid record-high egg prices, Americans are taking matters into their own hands. USA TODAY’s Bailey Schulz recently reported, “Chicken coops were among the most popular DIY projects to grab Americans’ attention last year, according to a report from home projects and repairs app Frontdoor based on Google search data. A rent-a-chicken program has also reported an uptick in reservations.” Even if consumers aren’t ready to ruffle some feathers, merchants at farmers markets certainly are. These smaller sellers have been reluctant to raise prices, and farmers market egg-spenses suddenly are looking pretty good for consumers.

Even with this can-do attitude, DIY chicken farmers and small sellers relying on the USPS to ship their poultry have faced a rude (and expensive) awakening. The USPS’ new surcharge for shipping live animals is making it more expensive for hatcheries to ship chicks, especially for mom-and-pop operations that “don’t have the privilege of contracts with USPS that allow large-scale hatcheries to ship live chicks.” The USPS claims the fee is to “cover the additional costs associated with handling and transporting of all live animals and perishables.” The agency fails to provide additional information on what the fee will actually be used for. And, while there are many horror stories of recipients failing to pick up their precious cargo on time or arriving to find dead chicks, this is the exception to the rule. In reality, the mortality rate for shipped chicks is roughly comparable to unshipped chicks.

Now that there’s a change in leadership at the USPS, hopefully this fee goes the way of the dodo.