For years, the U.S. Postal Service has faced competition from the likes of United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. To fight them off, it hired outside trucking companies at cut-rate prices, required them to meet aggressive schedules and then looked the other way when they ran afoul of highway safety rules, a Wall Street Journal investigation found.
The result has been deadly. Postal contractors have been involved in at least 68 fatal crashes that killed 79 people in the past three years, according to police crash and inspection records.
