Posties are delivering billions of parcels and fewer letters, but Australia Post is determined to deliver for another 200-plus years. And they hope that a new delivery of quiet electric motor-bikes will reduce the number of attacks from dogs provoked by noisy machines.
A “two-speed” business resulted in AusPost declaring another annual loss on Friday, as revenue from parcels continued to grow with more than 2.5 billion delivered each year, while letter deliveries fell to 1950s levels.
The loss of $88.5 million for the 12 months to June 30 followed a $200.3 million deficit a year earlier.
But chief executive Paul Graham said it was a “solid result” against stiff competition from large, well-funded foreign multi-nationals and other private operators.
“There’s an incredibly aggressive and competitive market out there – companies like Amazon are spending billions and billions of dollars to compete,” Mr Graham told AAP.
Domestic parcel volumes increased by 1.8 per cent, contributing to parcels revenue of $6.46 billion, an increase of 3.3 per cent.
“We’re holding our own,” Mr Graham said, as the bottom line improves.
“We’ve been around for 215 years and we’ve got no other goal than being around for at least another 215 years,” he said.
Adding to the country’s largest electric delivery fleet of more than 5100 vehicles, AusPost this week plugged in 175 UBCO electric motorbikes.
Capable of reaching speeds of up to 80 km/h, the e-bikes will help electrify routes that were previously challenging for three-wheel electric delivery vehicles to access.
“We also think it will help us with our dog bites, because the dogs do react to the sound of a motorbike – if they can’t hear it, maybe they won’t be curious and come out to see what’s going on,” Mr Graham said.
With more than 80 per cent of Australian households shopping online, he said the e-commerce business was expected to double in the next 10 years.
Baby boomers might be splurging but cash-strapped younger generations were looking for budget buys and comparing prices far more than when times were less stressful, he said.
But fewer customers are sending letters and visits to post offices continue to decline.
Parcels and services revenue rose to $7.42 billion, while losses in the letters business were $361.8 million as letter volumes fell 12.9 per cent to 1.76 billion.
The average household now receives fewer than two stamped letters a week, which is expected to halve in the next five years.
Over-the-counter transactions have fallen by 4.9 per cent and by more than a quarter (28.7 per cent) since 2019.
Group revenue rose 1.8 per cent to $9.13 billion and the cost of subsidising letter delivery under federal obligations was $447 million.
Mr Graham said the government understood the critical role played by AusPost and more than 64,000 staff, especially in regional and remote communities, but there was no government funding for the “significant burden” of maintaining a universal letter price.
“We have a commitment to have 4000 post offices – 2500 regional, rural and remote – and that’s why we were pleased with the government’s first phase of regulations that allowed us to deliver mail on alternate days and increase the price of a stamp,” he said.
But investing more in the growing parcel business was expected to be the best bet for sustaining deliveries for another 200 years.
AAP
I’ve been running an Ubco on the farm for a couple of years, great bike 2WD.
Reference to the supply of the electric motorbikes (bikes means two wheels, and these are two wheelers, as opposed to the electric three wheelers (electric motor trikes), that people may have been seeing in the last year or so, used by Australia Post), is in the short EV news video from the country of supply of the new electric motorbikes, at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfWSr26jSQ8&ab_channel=EcotricityNZ
One thing of note – it is not the noise of the motorbikes, that makes dogs attack posties – some years ago, when I worked as a temporary, city postie, delivering postal mail on a pedal bicycle (route was about 30km long, up and down hills, delivering to around 1500 addresses), we were warned about the dogs, and, the dogs to fear, were not the big dogs, like the alsatians and the rottweilers – the dogs to fear, were the smallest ones, like the jack russell terriers and the chihuahuas, that were like piranha.
Conspicuous by its absence in the above article, is mention of the status of battery electric delivery vans and trucks, used by Australia Post – what percentage of their fleet are now battery electric, and, what are they doing about converting the whole fleet to battery electric vehicles?
See
https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/sustainability/electric-vehicles –
“We are committed to having 100% electric vehicles in our own fleet by 2025 and 100% our Last Mile Delivery Partners electric by 2030.”
https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/media-centre/media-release/nz-post-tackles-carbon-emissions-with-60-new-electric-vans
https://www.nzpost.co.nz/about-us/media-centre/media-release/nz-post-adds-new-eactros-electric-truck-to-its-commercial-fleet-0
https://www.eeca.govt.nz/insights/case-studies-and-articles/nz-post-electric-vans/ –
“As part of their commitment to reducing emissions, with support from EECA’s Low Emissions Vehicle Contestable Fund (now known as the Low Emission Transport Fund), NZ Post trialled eight electric vans in their courier fleet during 2018 and 2019.”
Ah, but, this IS Australia – “Pollution? Deliberately killing Australians and making Australians sick, and, wrecking the environment? She’ll be right mate – it is not our problem…”
It interesting that these new electric motorbikes are produced i New Zealand, the country of origin of the Tuatara electric UTV (off-road version of an ATV) range – these electric vehicles originating in a country which, when it had a government that was not hostile to clean energy and clean vehicles, facilitated to development of battery electric vehicles, before the NZ government was taken over by a drug cartel that undid the advances of the previous government.
With the Australian people yet to advance to, and, fully support clean energy and clean vehicles (let’s vote for yet another parliament full of members that are owned by fossil; fuel companies and other mineral resources companies, because we are not very bright, and that is the way that the feral parliament wants to keep us – free of independent thought), we will always be importers of technology and useful things.
And, see the latest comments about the article about the top selling utes on this web site https://thedriven.io/2024/08/14/top-selling-utes-and-hybrids-are-thirstier-and-dirtier-than-claimed-study-finds/
…
Yep, agree with all that. BTW I have only been bitten once by a dog: a Pekingese. Piranha is right!
Our local postie has been using an electric trike for ages already. The Alsatian next door still goes berserk when she hears/sees it.
They are not making money because of companies like Temu from China that is categorized as a “developing country”. Guess who picks up the bill for those Temu parcels? You may pay a few dollars, if that, for a delivery from China but once it hits our shores AusPost has to cover the costs of delivery to your door.
And they would be paid for that delivery…
The problem with dog attacks is that it is learned behaviour, reinforced every day by the posties visit. The dog hears the postie, rushes out and barks – the postie leaves. “That worked well” says the dog to itself! But next day he is back again, so the dog has to try harder, and so it escalates. Dog owners are rarely around at the time, so it really has to be action from the postie – throw the dog a dog-biscuit perhaps and gradually make friends with them?
The story is bs, my mates two dogs know when the postie turns up on his electric bike.
My dogs were not too bothered by electric bikes until the postie started using one. Now they are obsessed with them. The electric ones will occasionally sneak by, but I think they have learned what time of the day to go to the window and watch now.
Here’s a similar question.
Can hiding them save EV chargers from vandal attacks?
What?