E-Commerce Drains Billions of Letters from Post Office

The traditionally long lines in post offices during the holiday season are noticeably shorter this year, and figures released Wednesday show why.

About 1.1 billion fewer pieces of snail mail were sent in 2004, and that's on top of an almost 3.5 billion drop from 2003 and a 1.3 billion drop from 2002. All told, the government's figures show that Americans sent 103.7 billion pieces of first-class mail in 2001 and only 97.9 billion pieces in 2004, a loss of some 5.8 billion pieces of mail or about a 6 percent drop.

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