NEW YORK, Nov. 6 (UPI) -- United Parcel Service, stepping up its attack on the post office, plans a new service in which thousands of packages would be delivered daily by regular letter carriers.
The new bare-bones service is called UPS Basic and is designed to steal some of the post office's biggest customers, especially mail-order merchants who often avoided UPS because of its comparatively steep rates, the Wall Street Journal said.
UPS arch rival FedEx Corp. is expected to begin a similar test.
The move underscores a growing UPS campaign to recapture business lost during the past few years to the post office and smaller competitors that have pecked away at the company's longtime dominance in the $25 billion-a-year U.S. ground-shipping industry.
The postal service already makes residential deliveries for the former Airborne Inc. and other large mailers that bundle their shipments together using companies known as consolidators.
