Only in a non-capitalist country does the state owned mail system solve it’s own problems by not asking for more taxpayer money.
Why Finland’s Mail Carriers Are Mowing People’s Lawns
Posti, the country’s mail service, will start offering the service next month in an effort to raise money.
These days, the snail-mail business is, gently put, not very lucrative. In a world of email and text messaging, and an enormous array of mobile-communication apps, national mail providers have had to get creative to make money as mail volume shrinks and commercial delivery companies beat them to the front door.
For Finland, one new strategy involves delivering something other than mail. Starting next month, Posti, the country’s postal service, will start mowing their customers’ lawns.
“We believe many customers will be happy to outsource lawn mowing when we make it convenient for them to do so,” said Anu Punola, the director at Posti, in a statement announcing the pilot program last week.
Postal workers will mow Finns’ lawns on Tuesdays “due to the lower volume of advertisements and publications distributed on that day” between mid-May and August this year. Customers can order the service online and must provide their own lawnmower. Thirty-minute lawn-mowing sessions cost 65 euros, or about $74, per month, and 60-minute sessions are 130 euros, or about $147, per month. The icing on the cake: It’s tax-deductible.
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