US Postal Office withdraws its surface rate for books

The US Postal Service is withdrawing for individual customers its service of shipping goods internationally on cargo ships. The service will be withdrawn by mid-May. Surface deliveries have been crucial to the survival of smaller booksellers and those who sell to international markets, as the prices are around a third of air freight rates. Larger companies such as Amazon.com will not be affected as it qualifies for bulk discounts due its high volumes.

In announcing the changes last month, the post office said demand for international air-mail delivery was increasing at the expense of sea-borne services, which account for just 2.7 percent of foreign deliveries. “As a result, efficient international surface delivery networks have diminished and costs have dramatically increased,” the Postal Service said.

This is indeed a sad change. We shipped all our books back home to India, when we moved from Providence, RI in 2004 using this surface delivery rate. We had 10 boxes of books all of which we shipped by surface, which reached us three months later.