A $3 billion deficit and expected losses of $6 billion more have led the Postmaster General to suggest cutting mail delivery from six to five days.
The post office blames FedEx and email, along with the decline of advertising mailers that has occurred with the economic downturn, for its troubles. Various studies have estimated that cutting a day of service, probably Tuesday or Saturday, could save between $1.9 and $3.5 billion annually.
We pay most of our bills online, most of our packages come via UPS or DHL, so the only mail we usually get is magazines and ad fliers. Would you care if the mail came only five days a week?
Postal Service Considers Cutting Delivery Day [MSNBC]
(Photo: Consumerist)
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I’d say they’re already doing it–in violation of federal law. I started to notice a couple of weeks ago that I was suddenly getting no mail 2-3 days a week, when I normally get at least junk every day. An informal survey of friends and family (all in different areas and states) revealed the same experience. Everyone thought it was just them.
Our town’s little newspaper publishes twice a week and is delivered on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’m sure they would be thrilled (NOT) if the USPS dropped Tuesday delivery.
All I can say is that before they DARE to cut service to all of us, how about forcing everyone to standardize on the lowest-cost delivery method?
Dallas, for example, still has many neighborhoods with door-to-door walk-up doorstep delivery. I’m sorry, but from an operating expense standpoint it is time to cut these folks off. Everyone else in new neighborhoods has been saddled with the “community keyed boxes”.
FIRST – force these people to join the lower cost-crowd or come to the post office to pick up their mail.
SECOND – consider the reduction of services.
@Dwayne Windham: So how bad is mail theft in those community keyed boxes?
@theblackdog:
No theft at all. They have locks on them that take a key to open you “flap”.
@wgrune:
you = your. I wasn’t calling you a flap.
@wgrune: I still question it only because Phoenix had tons of cluster mailboxes much like you describe, with a key to open them. Unfortunately thieves would regularly pick locks or vandalize the boxes to get them open and steal mail.
Nowadays most of those boxes are gone in the area.
@Dwayne Windham: Sorry, but if you choose to live a neighborhood with cul-de-sacs and cookie-cutter houses, simply helping increase the sprawl that has helped put the USPS into this mess in the first place, then you deserve to deal with the locked communal mailboxes. You knew the deal when you moved there.
My suggestion: Move to a real neighborhood, not a place where your house looks like 50 others in the subdivision, meet your carrier, and help reduce the sprawl.
A piece of mail was taken to an Arizona (major city) post office on 1/20, not processed in the post office until 1/22 (the postmark), and not received by me until 1/27 in the midwest. Apparently, at least at that branch, the USPS is already operating on a 5-day week, and definitely the letter went on quite a journey before it finally landed in my mailbox 5 days after postmark. The USPS has not been delivering and doing well for a long time for first class mail unless you pay the extra money for priority mail, so I think we’re already used to the cutback in service.
Ok if people are using mail less then its time for the USPS to start firing people. Its time to reel in government agencies and public good corporations such as the MTA. There companies have a steady income stream but have grown way too big.
about time. Who wants mail on Saturdays.
Great, it takes long enough to get things to my house via USPS, now it will take a day longer >:|
That’s beside the fact that they’re a bunch of complete idiots. I can’t even have them hold a package for me for one day while I go to pick it up. The ZIP code got smudged on it at it was bouncing back and forth between two offices for the better part of three weeks.
What’s worse is that their “main” office can’t do jack about it so you have to call the local offices to get anything done. Even then they weren’t very adept at grabbing a package that practically every employee knew just by the sight of it. Literally, when I picked it up, five or six people behind the counter remarked how they were happy someone was finally picking it up. WHAT?! If you had done your jobs in the first place and just put a stop on it like I asked three weeks earlier I’d have had my Mom’s Christmas present out of your hair a lot sooner.
Classic example of red tape hard(ly) at work.
They have to buy more “Next Window Please” signs for their postal stations.
I saw cut it to 3 days per week only. We never really needed 6 day delivery.
@kwsventures: Used to be 7 day, twice daily I believe.
“The post office blames FedEx and email, along with the decline of advertising mailers that has occurred with the economic downturn, for its troubles.”
How about blaming the outrageous price of stamps?
@invisiblenemies: Our stamps are NOT outrageous. Try going to any other modern country and tell us how much it costs.
Or are you trying to say that sending a postcard from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada to the US for $3 USD isn’t outrageous? If anything the USPS could charge $0.75 or more for a first class stamp and still be cheaper than the vast majority of postal systems across the planet.
I love how people complain but don’t look at the fact that the USPS is actually a huge cost saving to the American consumer.
Sure… Blame it on FedEx and email. That’s very typical of government bureaucrats. If the postal service is not doing well, why not take a look at what they might be doing wrong? Why not reduce the number of workers since they obviously aren’t getting enough business?
@kreatre2009: Sounds good. Let’s start with your neighborhood (since you seem to be volunteering). I suggest you round up everyone around to go purchase a P.O. box and then inform your local postmaster that a carrier is no longer needed for your area. Then let us know how that works for you.
Honestly I’d have no problem with it if they decided to only deliver three days a week (Monday, Wednesday and Friday) though like another poster I think that the post offices themselves should be open Monday through Saturday.
Another crisis, another scam. When they raise postage a few cents the deficit will disappear. But under cover of the fictitious deficit they will reduce service and reallocate the money to someone’s pocket.
Cut it back to Mon, Wed & Fri. Then cut their pay and benefits by 1/2 since they’ll be part-time. Huge savings!!!
This is because of the $$$$$$ they have to pay for the insurance/pension plans for retirees.
So….they will be paid for less work..
Thanks gov’t!!!!
They could even do a 3 day delivery Mon, Wed, and Fri.
A sign of the changing times. I have no problem with it.
Let a private company handle mail instead of the government. Businessmen know how to run a profitable business – the federal government doesn’t.
Ask yourself (and maybe someone you know) this question: Why isn’t competition allowed in first class mail?
@MooseOfReason: Businesspeople wouldn’t deliver to places where it wasn’t profitable. The USPS has to, including delivering mail (including groceries) to a Native American village at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
@MooseOfReason:
“Business people” did a great job running GM, Chrysler, and any number of banks and brokerages. Look at the cost of mailing a flat with FEDEX and UPS compared to the postal service. You want to mail a letter for $15?
@elisa: I hadn’t heard that. Do you have a source?
@eric4ok: GM and Chrysler should have been allowed to fail. They shouldn’t have gotten a bailout. There are plenty of private companies that are run well. I don’t know why you automatically jump to car companies.
The government runs the USPS and they have no competition – it’s a monopoly. They posted billions of dollars in losses; I don’t know how you can call them more competent than car companies that did the same.
UPS and FedEx charge by weight. It would not be $15 to mail a letter. Plus a new company could start up specifically to deliver first class mail.
@MooseOfReason: This book, which has really interesting stories about small-town America:
[www.amazon.com]
(I’ve never watched his TV show though).
One chapter is about him going to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with a donkey train and the USPS mail carrier, apparently the people in the Indian village at the bottom order all their groceries to be mailed to them. They also order other stuff, including building materials.
My mom works for the P.O. I’d imagine she’s happy about this.
I wonder what this would mean for the offices being open and for parcel delivery. I’d imagine those services would continue being available 6 days a week. The P.O. truck could easily deliver packages much quicker without mail getting in the way. That’ what they’re trying to rebrand themselves as anyway – parcel delivery.
Like Jamaces I’m in Canada and we have always had 5 weekdays of mail delivery – somehow we manage to get business done…hopefully Canada Post doesn’t follow the lead and reduce us to Monday through Thursday Delivery!
People complaining about Postal Service hours should just try and use United Parcel Service. NOT open on Saturday, inconvenient locations of package centers, short hours, about the most non-customer friendly service hours and staff plus wildly expensive.
How do the postal workers feel about it? Cutting a day doesn’t mean less mail…it means they just have MORE work the remainder of the days.
40 Cents Of Every Postal Dollar is Spent on ‘Management’ … For those of you who don’t work at the post office, the job of the Postal Supervisor and even the postmaster is to sit around all day and do nothing … It’s a job where you are paid a large salary for doing the least amount of work … If they really want to trim the fat from the huge government cow, then management should trim their own fat first
This is flawed math, since the mail is a constant flow of work. The amount of mail to be delivered won’t be reduced, just the number of days they have to deliver it. So they will increase the workload on the other days of the week, which will result in overtime and more costs anyway.
On an unrelated note, I attended an event a few years ago where they keynote speaker was the the Postmaster General and he was talking about their new technology and how every physical address in the US would soon have a corresponding email address through so mail through the post office could be delivered electronically. I am wondering how that project is going…
As long as my bills give me that day as a grace period and don’t charge me for being late because the mail doesn’t come on a Saturday due date, then fine.
Why not Monday through Friday? I’d hope they keep the same hours as the UPS store and FedEx though. Although, I agree about the pay rates for postal workers. I’ve never been in a post office that offers better service than a FedEx Office or UPS store. And you know they aren’t making $23 at the UPS Store.
So if they are cutting a day, I think its only fair that they cut the stamp price. Hell, I would be happy if they would allow us to say whether or not you want bulk mail delivery or not.
I would prefer it if they would cut a day of midweek service. I don’t mind having to wait another day for my mail to go out, but I mostly use the mail at my house when I’m not working, i.e. the weekend.
not sure how keep it open on saturday will work anyway.
My local post office is packed with idiots that never seem to know what their purpose there is.
I have been a USPS clerk for 27 years..I am fiercely loyal to my job and resent the implications from some commenters that all clerks are lazy, uneducated and surly..my co-workers and I give an honest 8 hours every day (gone are the 10 and 12 hour days, 6-day weeks of the 80′s and 90′s)…most of the clerks in my office, including myself, have college degrees; many throughout the USPS are retired military folks. My co-workers and I make an effort to be pleasant all the time, even when we may not feel like it..just like our customers, we have lives….most days are good, some are not…We have managers at all levels who just swirl in and out of our lives as if they are all in panic mode, just not quite knowing what to do..some who came into the Postal Service merely months ago full of ambition to be in management, but who lack experience of any kind, are given way too much responsibility. Some with more years under their belts are great, but lack any real power to make meaningful changes because everything we do is standardized and literally takes an act of congress to change. But we, clerks and carriers, are there day after day and we are doing are best to provide a service that the younger generations just don’t “get”…we understand that many do not rely on mail as their main communication tool anymore and we are losing business to higher technology…there aren’t too many businesses out there who haven’t felt the effects of that, good or bad. Nationally our leaders are talking about a 5-day delivery week…locally, next week in my city, many retail offices are cutting their operating hours to reduce manhours and truck “runs”…a lot of these changes are hopefully temporary….many businesses do still rely heavily on us for our services and I know at least in my family, my mom still waits for the mail to arrive every day. Many companies are feeling the negative effects of our country’s economic woes but I for one, am hoping something as iconic as the US Postal Servive can pull through this. How many other companies come in contact with every other business and every private residence, whether it’s at the top of a high-rise in NYC or on the banks of a lake in Utah, 6 days out of every week? It is really amazing to think about!
my netflix!!
honestly, i wouldn’t be the least bit sad to see the post office go completely, as long as the other delivery services picked up the slack (and they would). it’s nice to have my UPS service drive all the way down my driveway and deliver my packages to the porch door, out of the rain. The postal service simply shoved one of my packages in a plastic bag and chucked in to a snowbank from the road. Good thing I saw it and wondered what the hell it was…
I am a city letter carrier and have worked for the post office for 5 years. I for one would love to have Saturdays off. Myself as well as almost every postal employee that I know. City carriers get a Saturday off every 6 weeks. That means no regular plans for a 2 day weekend like most every other correspondence/package carrier is able to enjoy. As to the comments on our pay scale, yes some of us after so many years do earn between $20-$25 an hour, our work does not only consist of sorting letters, pick up and delivery of mail and packages, but we do this every day in all types of weather including wind,ice and snow storms. We battle a variety of hazards on nearly every route in the nation everyday. So in answer to the comment of is our work worth what we are paid. I can only say to walk the 9 miles on my route in my shoes for a week and you will have your answer.
To everyone who think that the letter carriers are so lazy, try doing their job sometime. You have no idea what you are talking about. Most of them walk 8 to 10 miles a day to deliver your mail and in all kinds of weather when you are sitting on your butt inside. When someone calls in sick, they do extra miles to pick up the slack. I doubt that those of you who think they are so lazy couldn’t do their job, but you sure make good arm chair quarterbacks.
Try it before you make stupid comments about a job you know nothing about, only 25% of people that try for the job can do it, and most quit within 2 years because it really is hard work.
they need to combine rurual route/i see the carrier come within a half mile of each other/cutting route would save each office about 40k per route/need to cut manegment pay by 6% across the board since that cut the rurual carrier after each mail count
Perhaps cuts need to start at the top. 800,000 year with a 400,000 bonus is unacceptable. The problem is top heavy bloated management. How does the top guy cry poverty and yet accept 400,000 in a bonus package. I wonder if a stamp was put on that check and sent through the mail……
Where they make their cuts is with their lowliest employees….
They raise the price of stamps and yet cut the salaries of their carriers.
A career with them is not the promising future it once was. At the rate they are going, mail services will eventually be done by the private sector or at the very least, home delivery will stop and you will have to go to a central location to pick up your mail. By then the Post Master General will be fat and happy getting his retirement benefits through direct deposit. No letters to Santa kiddies, he’s been cut from the budget.
Here is another reason the USPS loses money every year. It’s because of the Federal employee’s golden parachute retirement plan. The retiree is replaced with a new employee. The retiree continues to draw a substantial % of their base salary and other perks. This results in paying both the new guy (and his benefits) and the retiree. In essence, you are paying twice the salary for one employee to do the work. Multiply that by all the retirees and it’s easy to see why they are always broke.
It’s the same with any unionized business. GM can never sell enough cars to pay for all its current employees and all the benefits to retired workers. Something has to give. In the case of postal workers, stamps and services are increased or delivery days are eliminated. Taken to the extreme, they will run themselves out of business.