US: Postal Service Considers Cutting Into Alcohol Shipping Business

(ABCNews) - As the U.S. Postal Service faces $15 billion in losses this year as fewer people send mail, one of the ways it hopes to raise money is by shipping alcohol.

Private carriers have been shipping alcohol for decades, but the postal service is prevented by law from engaging in the same business.

This week, Postmaster General Patrick Donahue said he hopes the agency can deliver alcoholic beverages and thereby raise $50 million a year.

“There’s a lot of money to be made in shipping beer, wine and spirits,” Donahoe told the Associated Press on Thursday. “We’d like to be in that business.”

Private shipping company UPS offers wine shipping services for customers who are licensed to ship wine. Smaller shipping firms, like Premier Wine Shipping, which services much of California wine country, would face stiff competition from the postal service’s typically lower rates.

The company ships over 600 cases of wine each week from its three locations in St. Helena, Sonoma and Healdsburg, Calif.

Tony Aguilera, general manager for Premier Wine Shipping, said, “A small business like us — with the post office being four or five buildings down — it is going to take a lot of our customers, depending on their prices and their reliability.”

Aguilera has initial concerns about the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to ship wine safely.

“There have been plenty of times when they’ve lost packages of mine and there’s really no way track something in the same way as UPS and FedEx,” he said.