Calling the six-days-per-week mail delivery business model “no longer sustainable,” the U.S. Postal Service Wednesday morning announced 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. But eliminating Saturday mail deliver is expected to save the Posal Service, which is in debt, $2 billion a year.
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 that may be shifted to another day.
A Rasmussen poll on mail delivery in 2012 showed “Three-out-of-four Americans 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? Post a comment below.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dVt11UZ0uA
They were required to pre-fund 75 years worth of pensions in a two-year span. And couldn't. Of course, no American company - or public agency - could. Even Sergiy Brin said it'd bankrupt Google if they had to, and in the history of the world, no government has required this ever. And, as you all should also know, not a single dime of tax dollars goes to the US Postal Service. For those who argue that a private company could do it as well (which was the reason for the GOP proposal, to open up more delivery options for wealthy shippers who bankrolled them), just remember this: almost 40% of FedEx packages are delivered by the USPS, because FedEx doesn't have the infrastructure in many places to handle delivery.
And it's the GOP pension prefund plan that caused this. Can you name a single government agency anywhere in the world, or a single private company, no matter how profitable, that can prefund 75 years worth of pensions in a two-year span?
And not one dime of that comes from your taxes. PLEASE get your facts right.