CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Despite increasing competition in the information age and the ravishing effects of the recession, the U.S. Postal Service, better known as the post office, keeps chugging in the promising light of the future.

Still, the post office has cut back employment in West Virginia and across the country like private businesses of late. But it has not gone bankrupt like General Motors or gone busted like some banks.

Nevertheless, the postal service has seen the need to cut staff by 25,000 in the country this year. In Charleston, the remote mailing process center will lose about 300 employees by Thanksgiving. About 85 are full-time workers and the rest are part time, according to postal officials.

Ups and downs are nothing new to the national post office. It has confronted changes and challenges since the first mail carrier on horseback completed a route. Before and since the Great Depression, the postal service has been a rouser run by and for political patronage and later under modern civil service.

I remember in the 1950s when advocates pushed to privatize the post office for the claim of better service. The most frequently named to take over were Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.

Well, Ward is now gone and Sears has been eclipsed as No. 1 retailer in the nation, trusted and respected by millions of consumers.

The post office relies on similar trust today. It competes with such private carriers as FedEx and United Parcel Service. They deliver for online merchants everything from DVDs to medicine.

Public concern grows over the failure of online merchants to collect sales tax on goods they sell. The tax is 6 percent in West Virginia and helps pay for public services in city and county.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Despite increasing competition in the information age and the ravishing effects of the recession, the U.S. Postal Service, better known as the post office, keeps chugging in the promising light of the future.

Still, the post office has cut back employment in West Virginia and across the country like private businesses of late. But it has not gone bankrupt like General Motors or gone busted like some banks.

Nevertheless, the postal service has seen the need to cut staff by 25,000 in the country this year. In Charleston, the remote mailing process center will lose about 300 employees by Thanksgiving. About 85 are full-time workers and the rest are part time, according to postal officials.

Ups and downs are nothing new to the national post office. It has confronted changes and challenges since the first mail carrier on horseback completed a route. Before and since the Great Depression, the postal service has been a rouser run by and for political patronage and later under modern civil service.

I remember in the 1950s when advocates pushed to privatize the post office for the claim of better service. The most frequently named to take over were Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward.

Well, Ward is now gone and Sears has been eclipsed as No. 1 retailer in the nation, trusted and respected by millions of consumers.

The post office relies on similar trust today. It competes with such private carriers as FedEx and United Parcel Service. They deliver for online merchants everything from DVDs to medicine.

Public concern grows over the failure of online merchants to collect sales tax on goods they sell. The tax is 6 percent in West Virginia and helps pay for public services in city and county.

Private and public studies say that most Internet shopping is by the affluent with credit cards and computers. But the less affluent also shop online, which means no sales tax paid by them either.

The post office and states feel the lack of this revenue. The price of a first-class stamp is up by 2 cents to 44 cents, but the postal service debt remains awesome almost like the national debt.

Postal management wrestles with the problem. They make changes in the system to meet the challenges of the uphill climb from increasing demand for service and solvency.

Another matter is a national survey by the post office says, "Two-thirds of all consumers do not expect to receive personal mail, but when they do it makes their day."

Yet, 55 percent in the survey look forward daily to see what the mail holds for them, indicating the mail's importance in American daily life, with no apologies to cell phones and other competitors.

A West Virginia task force has filed a national plan with the Congress to enforce collection of the sales tax on Internet purchases. It's estimated that the annual loss of tax revenue to the state is $50 million and $16 billion to the nation.

Plainly, the post office is in no fix to compete with tax dodgers in good times or bad times. But it keeps chugging to reach millions who wait daily to see what the mail brings.

Peeks is a retired business/labor editor of the Gazette.