Douglas Rooks has been a Maine editor and columnist for 41 years. He welcomes comment at [email protected]. His new biography of Gov. Ken Curtis, “Transformational,” is out now. 

Not long ago, I received a small package delivered by the U.S. Postal Service to my mailbox on a Saturday evening around 6 p.m. A bonus package, untracked, was also on my doorstep. The first package had left Scarborough at 1 a.m., but didn’t go out from Augusta until 4 p.m.

The carrier picked up outgoing mail. But I didn’t receive regular mail delivery that day, nor the day before or the day after. In a nutshell, that’s what’s wrong with the the Postal Service: delivery trucks whizzing around seven days a week delivering packages, but not the mail.

The Postal Service has become a national nightmare. The cost of mailing a letter has risen steeply — up 64% over the last eight years, double inflation, with another 4-cent increase effective this Sunday.

Yet delivery standards continue to plummet. Overnight delivery of first class within Maine vanished long ago, and if you use “media mail,” which includes everything from books and magazines to DVDs, expect it to take a week.

We’re constantly told the Postal Service is “running out of money,” yet the system’s managers fail to devise any coherent plan to put its finances in order. Some wounds are self-inflicted. Former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy drastically reduced air shipments, the biggest delivery slowdown to date, in favor of a ground-based logistics system that was never implemented.

The biggest reason for dismal recent performance is the creation of two separate delivery systems, one for “regular mail,” the other for packages. That’s what happened at my house, and yours too.

First class mail, formerly the marquee product, has been back-burnered in favor of competing for packages with FedEx, UPS, DHL and — especially — Amazon. It’s not going well.

There was a reason for two tiers: first-class mail deliveries have fallen markedly since computer billing took hold and email began replacing letters. But 44 billion pieces are still mailed annually.

There’s no realistic future in which first-class mail disappears; many don’t trust online transactions, small businesses rely on it, federal and state governments require thousands of mailed forms and postal prescriptions are a lifeline for older Americans.

There’s also a real question whether poor service and escalating prices aren’t creating an unnecessary “death spiral,” as shippers leave USPS and take business elsewhere.

Amazon is a special, and dangerous, case. It was once the biggest postal customer; one in seven packages delivered by USPS originated with Amazon. But owner Jeff Bezos is trying to monopolize package delivery, as he has for online book sales and other merchandising.

That’s the significance of Amazon warehouses proposed all over Maine. USPS “last mile” deliveries will disappear, just as Amazon’s advance has forced a retreat by FedEx and UPS, which are cutting routes. Recent signing of a “last mile” contract with DHL, smallest of the four, will hardly close the gap.

The situation cries out for a major antitrust lawsuit from the Justice Department against Amazon — highly unlikely under the Trump administration, but perhaps not its successor.

In the meantime, USPS should finally come up with a plan to reintegrate package and first-class deliveries so people can count on getting mail daily with improved delivery times. The experiment of trying to compete with private carriers has failed; we need to figure out how to rescue our oldest and most popular government service.

There are places to build from. Some first-class staples, like birthday and anniversary cards, remain stubbornly postal, despite marketers’ best efforts to move them online.

The experience of reading a print magazine and newspaper is incomparably better than scanning the same material online — one extremely bad habit we’ve acquired during the digital age. If there were dependable, affordable delivery, weeklies and monthlies could flourish. The “24-hour news cycle” has long since become tedious, distracting and disorienting.

USPS still employs more than 600,000 Americans and there are some 31,000 post offices. It could offer new services, such as banking — as in other countries and here, too, years ago, compensating for growing “banking deserts.” Other revenue streams could complement basic delivery services.

Why has none of this happened before? Much can be attributed to the “hybrid” model of a private corporation controlled by an ill-functioning board of governors but still required to meet extensive congressional mandates.

The Postal Service should come under congressional and executive direction and supervision to get the attention it badly needs. That will take champions willing to take on the hard, detailed work needed to improve public services.

The field is wide open at this point. Would any ambitious new congressman like to take it on?