U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General November 28, 2011Alaska Bypass: Beyond Its Original Purpose RARC-WP-12-005i
Alaska Bypass: Beyond Its Original Purpose
Executive Summary
Alaska is an enormous state with few roads and many remote communities accessibleonly by air. As the 20
th
century evolved, residents increasingly relied on the PostalService to carry shipments of goods from urban areas like Anchorage and Fairbanks tothese remote villages. Eventually, the Anchorage Mail Facility became overwhelmed bythe volume, and it could take weeks for some packages to arrive. In 1972, the AlaskaBypass program was established as a mutually beneficial solution between theU.S. Postal Service and air carriers to remove bottlenecks and improve service.Today, shippers in Anchorage and Fairbanks prepare shrink-wrapped pallets of goods,pay preferred ground Parcel Post rates, and deliver these full pallets directly to airlines,thus effectively “bypassing” the Postal Service entirely. In addition to the Bypassprogram, mail is also sent on the same planes to remote locations in Alaska. However,unlike mail, which is delivered only to the Post Office or its equivalent in remotelocations, the airlines deliver Bypass orders directly to the recipient’s door. Due to the1,000-pound minimum weight requirement for each order, the recipients in these remotelocations are usually retail merchants. The Postal Service pays rates, set by theDepartment of Transportation (DOT), based on the costs incurred by the airlines. As aresult, the Postal Service’s primary role in Alaska Bypass is to pay the bills, with littlecontrol over any other aspect of the program.While the Alaska Bypass program started out as a thoughtful solution to a problem thatonce existed, much has changed since the early 1970’s, and Bypass has evolvedbeyond its original purpose. Based on the results of our research, we believe it is timefor changes to this historic program.Key Findings:1. The Postal Service lost $73 million on Alaska Bypass in FY 2010 and has littleability to lower its costs. Additionally, a number of obstacles, including theConsumer Price Index (CPI) price cap, constrain the Postal Service’s ability toincrease its prices, making these losses likely to continue in the future.2. Alaska Bypass is not mail. It is a freight service that includes items seeminglyconsidered nonmailable anywhere else in the United States that are shipped onshrink-wrapped pallets that would be nonmailable themselves.3. Alaska Bypass provides a higher level of service in Alaska than Priority Mail, butat average rates lower than Parcel Post.
