USPS recently expanded its Surface Visibility (SV) program by deploying 5,000 mobile cellular scanners to postal vehicle service drivers.
These scanners use GPS and geo-fencing to track mail movement — including arrivals and departures — and to simplify drops and pickups at detached mail units, mailer sites and freight houses.
USPS is deploying 5,000 mobile cellular scanners to postal vehicle service (PVS) drivers.
The cellular scanners are replacing the devices currently being used by postal vehicle service drivers, which include Intelligent Mail Devices (IMDs) and Mobile Delivery Devices (MDDs).
The initiative will help USPS provide greater visibility into its transportation network.
The SV program also has been expanded to an additional 113 sites with cellular and Wi-Fi scanners and to 58 peak season annexes to provide those locations with flexible scanning technology that uses the cellular network to close existing visibility gaps.
These initiatives are a collaborative effort between Transportation, Processing Operations and Enterprise Analytics to build and leverage operational intelligence, increase efficiencies and improve visibility across the network.
About time ! UPS and FedEx been using them! Now their testing Drones!
Operational intelligence? That is nothing but spying via scanner. This will allow abusive supervisors, managers and dolts in district offices to obsess over every little blip, every little perceived transgression, like being one minute over on a ten minute street break, for example, even if it’s hotter than hell and the carrier needs to rest a bit and cool off, one minute over on lunch, when we know management takes as much time as they damn well please, etc.
The good news is: as city letter carriers, no matter what the scanners do, management still has to physically observe the carrier on the street and cannot rely on scanner data by itself to discipline anybody, although there will be plenty who will, and thousands of letter carriers, most of them new with no interest in their union, the contract, their rights under it, or safety will allow themselves to be harassed, and if the local union isn’t worth a shit, disciplined.
This is very important for those who are just becoming career carriers. Management continues to treat newly converted regulars as CCA’s because too often union officers don’t tell them about the overtime lists and how their seniority works. They are in a running mindset and management has to take the responsibility for emphasizing running with no regard to accuracy, forwarding and return mail, or normal route maintenance. Carriers also have to take some of the blame because they could learn their rights, exercise them, and become good reliable carriers who try to get the right mail to the right person and put that and safety ahead of being a runner and making numbers for managers.
I am retiring very soon, and I could say I don’t have a dog in this hunt, but I really do, because my retirement benefits are contingent on the USPS staying viable. I suppose my benefits are protected, but after putting 32 years in, I would like to see letter carriers be honest, responsible and good representatives of the USPS because management sure as hell isn’t. Nobody can do your part to be more aware of your contract and rights – you must make the effort yourself, and if your branch doesn’t want to lift a finger, play favorites or suck up to management for personal gain, it’s up to you to vote them out, step up to the plate and make your branch a good one.
It’s what I did after the previous officers left the branch in a shambles, sucking up to the supervisor in exchange for gravy routes and generally throwing carriers to the wolves. A good friend became president, I stepped up as steward, and for 17 years fought the good fight, eventually getting to arbitration advocate level for a short time before my wife’s health problems forced me to back off on that work.
I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t corrupt, I hated managerial abuse and harassment worse than anything, filed numerous joint statements on violence in the workplace and those people are history. If you want a decent working environment, you need to be active – don’t depend on others because most of them are waiting for somebody else to do the work. Sad but true.
You have no one to show what it takes for the work place to be
operational. I think that we all agree that there are many things that
should be corrected because they do not make sense. I will leave you a
piece of advice. The only way any of us can fix anything is being able
to talk with the next human . If this job ever had anything of value, it
was the people that we all met. That would never have happened in any
other way. It is our differences that make us better, not worse.
Just another device to make sure predator drones will be able to follow those lazy slow carriers. Can a Hellfire missile be far behind? That would be more effective than a letter of warning.