Letters: Billion-Dollar Mailman

The U.S. Postal Service today is a big business ($30 billion in annual revenues) as well as an enormous bureaucracy (780,000 employees). For months the Postal Service board has been looking for a replacement for outgoing Postmaster General Albert V. Casey, a former airline executive who streamlined an unwieldy management during his brief seven-month tenure. Last week the board picked Preston R. (Bob) Tisch, 60, president of Loews Corp. in New York City.

As a businessman, Tisch certainly looks like a winner. Starting with a single hotel in New Jersey, he and his brother Laurence built a $7 billiona-year conglomerate. Tisch's mandate at the Postal Service will be to cut costs without alienating labor or losing an edge to increasingly competitive and technologically innovative private industry. Not an easy task, never mind snow, rain, heat or gloom of night.