Calling the six-days-per-week mail delivery business model “no longer sustainable,” the U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday it will eliminate Saturday delivery of mail by Aug. 1.
The plan to change delivery from six days a week to five would only affect first-class mail. Packages, mail-order medicines, priority and express mail would still be delivered on Saturdays, and local post offices will remain open for business Saturdays.
According to the U.S. Postal Service, the reasons are continued economic struggles and the increasing use of the Internet for communications and bill paying by consumers. The U.S. Postal Service is also the only federal agency required to pre-fund health benefits for retirees, and those costs are escalating quickly.
“Our current business model of delivering mail six days a week is no longer sustainable. We must change in order to remain an integral part of the American community for decades to come.”
Saturday is the lightest mail delivery day by volume and many businesses are closed on Saturdays, according to the U.S. Postal Service. However, many residents receive print magazines and ads on Saturdays in the mail that may be shifted to another day.
A Rasmussen poll on mail delivery in 2012 showed “Three-out-of-four Americans (75%) would prefer the U.S. Postal Service cut mail delivery to five days a week rather than receive government subsidies to cover ongoing losses.”
A USA Today/Gallup poll in 2010 found the majority of U.S. residents surveyed were ok with eliminating Saturday delivery. The March 2010 telephone survey of 999 adults revealed people age 55 and older were more likely than younger people to have used the mail to pay a bill or send a letter in the past two weeks.
Speak out: How will this change affect you? Will you miss getting mail on Saturdays?
1. The amount of junk mail would dramatically decline (99% of which is unwanted, un-needed, unread, and goes straight to landfills). Environmentally, a huge win in every way. 2. The revenue to the USPS would decline as well. But, 3. The labor, equipment, and vehicles required to process and deliver the mail would decline significantly as well, so the USPS could likely do the job with less revenue. Hard-mail is a dying idea. Most things that come/go in a mailbox can and likely should now be done electronically. Very few things "require" a hard copy these days. USPS is a dying entity, unless they completely change their operating methods and philosophy, reinventing themselves. Packages, yes. But envelopes? Flyers? No.
It's difficult to run a business when you can't increase your prices as your own costs increase, and no other company in the world is required to fully fund retirement 75 years in advance. The USPS facilitates over $1 trillion in economic activity every year at no cost to the US government. Why would you want to discourage that?
Continually fewer and fewer people use "hard copy" mail, which leaves only junk mail to provide their revenue. And that very junk mail is not only larger and more difficult to handle, it also gets significantly lower rates. Double whammy. As for their package rates; yes, I usually use USPS rather than UPS or FedEx, because their rates are indeed better. But if they are struggling financially, then even that part of their business is unsustainable. According to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, in order to return to profitability, the Postal Service needs to reduce its career workforce by approximately 220,000 by 2015, but cannot do so under the terms of existing collective bargain agreements.
Yes, we (society) needs the post office, fire departments, police and teachers but getting a job in one of those places should not be the gravy train for life (at the tax payers expense). Pay a reaosnble wage for a reasonable amount of work, not just years of service (like the priviate sector) and have them save for their own retirement like the rest of us (that pay them to sit on their ass).