In case you missed the news, the United States Postal Service announced that it would be stopping mail delivery on Saturdays beginning in August. According to them, it should save the service about 2 Billion a year. Yep, your Saturday mail costs the USPS 2 Billion a year. No wonder stamps are almost $0.50!
Random “feeling old moment”: I remember when you could send a first class letter for $0.22.
There’s a part of me that has to wonder out loud why it is that they’ve taken this long to cancel the Saturday mail. Especially if they’ve been bleeding money from their budget for years. Maybe they thought that it gave them some sort of competitive advantage because they were delivering things when other services weren’t? Maybe it was some hold over from some governmental regulation? Does anyone know why they delivered on Saturday in the first place?
The deficit for the USPS last year was $1.7 Billion. So, dropping the Saturday delivery could actually put them back in the black for 2014. I doubt it will do much to help them this year, since the change isn’t coming until August. Another interesting thing is that the change needs to be approved by Congress before it can be enacted. That would be the same Congress that has required the service to keep the employee pension funded for 75 years. Which, gauging by how well other employee pension programs are going isn’t exactly going to be an easy thing. My guess would be that getting that approval from Congress isn’t really a slam-dunk. Is Congress dumb enough to force the USPS to continue to bleed money? Do they see Saturday delivery as so essential that they’re willing to have the service spend $2 Billion to keep it?
In the end, I’d rather see Saturday delivery go away. Actual physical delivery of mail itself is becoming something of a antique. Nobody writes letters anymore. Or, at least, very few people do. Mostly it’s just bills and advertisements. Unless it’s a parcel, that is.
What do you think? Should Saturday delivery go? Or should it stay? Will Congress allow it to go away?
P.S. Normally, I would have posted this yesterday, but I couldn’t resist “delivering” it on a Saturday. 
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I think it is a good move by them. It is just the beginning of what they need to do to fix the problem though.
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I wouldn’t even mind seeing them eliminate Wednesday delivery in order to save another $2 Billion. I only get bills and junk mail. I mostly pay bills online anyway. Plus I suppose I could go totally electronic and get my bills through email so I would never use the USPS except for packages.
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I think getting rid of Saturday deliveries is a good idea too. In Canada our national postal service doesn’t deliver mail over the weekends (for the most part) and they’ve made a profit pretty much every single year for the past 16 years except 2011. 50 cents does sound expensive compared to a couple decades ago, but at least you guys aren’t paying 63 cents like we are up here
Not only should Saturday delivery go but the USPS should be allowed to make any and all other necessary changes to stay solvent without Congress’ approval.
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This is an idea that should have been considered long ago. Most people want to get away from bills and junk mail so losing Saturday is a no brainer. I suspect that it will not solve their monetary problems however.
a good book to read free online, amazon.com ( search inside this book ) or goggle.books is called The post office, its past record, its present condition and its potential relation to the new world era, daniel calhoun roper, 1913-1917 , so in that era congess was ingoring the working conditions of postal workers and then collective bargaining was formed, then in1970 congess had to address the great postal strike after again ignoring postal employee working conditions, and they were either on welfare working for the uspo or working 3 jobs to keep up with salaries in the nation, thus collective bargaining was reinforced, and the no strike law in effect. In 2000,2001 postal employee were made to pay in an extra 15 percent to their retirement systems, by the 1997 budget reconcilation act for budget reason only, thanked by the President and congress for their sacrifice. Reporting back to cogress the USPS notified them of an overfunded or overpaid retirement systems of 15 billion for fers, and 140 billion for csrs, then a law went in to effect making a retirement system even with the overpaid features of fers and csrs for postal employees out of the profits of the usps set aside in escrow called the paea, which proceeded to give pay per performace bonues to the top exeutives including pmg potter at that time of an increase in pay and benifits ( doubling what the President makes) and retirement in 2010 of 5.5 million, this was for undercutting lower staff in crafts section who had overpaid the retirement , so then an increase of closing post office and now a directed day off for delivery of no mail on saturday to save the usps finacial situation due to a manfactured crisis made by congress, here are links for information” http://www.awpu3800 first area tricounty local, PA library stress in the workforce, articals including ‘how the ongoing violation of the usps guiding principles are creating a toxic work enviorment, 2008 , ( postal commeents to the federal trade commision, 2007, and oig report federal budget treatment of the usps , 2009) http://www.billburrasjounral.org- misc google to find, scroll elevator page, read ‘ phoney excuses for diverting usps revenues, and myths versus facts’, google to find, ALEC/Koch Cabal the Privitization of USPS for Ups and FedEx, bob sloan, vltp .net april 2012, examiner.com, Tim McCown artical, ; behind all th schemes and lies of the privitization of USPS, june 2012, michigian american postal workers union, artical, the truth about the postal crisis, and http://www.savethepostoffice.com