I agree with streamlining.
I am pretty sure they already have their own form of bar codes though, also if someone does presort and does electronic postage, they can already cut costs. Er guess I am saying they have such discounts already in place.

Besides streamlining, I do think people need a bit more education about the postal services. Almost everyone uses a 1st class stamp when they do not need to. So when they do raise the rates on 1st class everyone bitches of course not knowing the options. Few know of everything that can be done online with them. They could automate and correct many issues with the offices themselves, like the whole human interaction part - most is not even needed.
As stated they should use the purchasing power to get better vehicles and of course that could spur development for the public at large. Delivery hours should get adjusted since they currently do it at times when they is a lot more traffic on the roads and there is no reason why they could not do early AM deliveries etc.
I also would not mind a special and much higher rate to send crap mail, like unsolicited offers and assorted junk mail.

USPS is competing with other parcel services as you can see others mention right in this thread. While they may be able to cut "some" advertising, you can't seriously suggest that a competing business cut off all advertising and still say in the competitive game. If FedEx were having problems, would your first recommendation being to cut advertising?

I've never used USPS, it's reliable?

i just looked into the ad budget for USPS, the last published #s are for 2006. they spent 126 million out of a total budget of2.2 billion.

only 5% of the budget spent on advertising is more than reasonable and not an area that would impact their current financial trouble if they were to reduce ad spending.

They should start to fine companies that send useless junk mail, why should a mail man waste his time delivering something that is going to get tossed in the trash. This should save them a lot of money and also make them money. The fines could be a couple hundred bucks. Half my mail is junk, I mostly go paperless these days.