U.S. Postal Service might cut Saturday delivery
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Letters might be signed and sealed, but delivery could be up in the air if a United States Postal Service, or USPS, proposal to cut Saturday delivery is successful.
Last week, before Congress, Postmaster General John Potter suggested eliminating delivery service on Saturdays to address the decline in mail volume, which decreased by 9.5 billion pieces in 2008.
If delivery services were cut from six days per week to five, the USPS might save $3.3 billion per year, said Jim Mruk, spokesman for the USPS Great Lakes Region.
“Is six-day delivery something that is still necessary due to the changing way that the people are using the mail?” he said.
The economy has an impact on the mail volume decline because items associated with failing aspects in the state economy, such as the automotive industry and the housing market, are mailed less often, Mruk said.
“The overall economy and the fact that industries that were traditionally large contributors to volume … they all had serious declines,” he said.
Post offices in the area might see a larger impact in the fall, once more students move to campus.
“(Students) are not here in the summer, but when they are, we get their mail,” said Terry Perkins, Okemos Post Office supervisor. “At this time it’s usually a little bit lighter on Saturday, but not a whole lot.”
Ending Saturday delivery might make conducting business more difficult, said Aaron Larvick, an owner of the Collegeville Textbook Company, 321 E. Grand River Ave.
“Occasionally that would impact business,” he said. “Sometimes we want information, invoices … obviously those come in the mail.”
The business might have to wait on filling orders for customers, Larvick said.
“That’s going to impact the service level, it would make service inferior,” he said.
Some students will be inconvenienced by the proposed changes because of time constraints during the week.
“I think it will affect me because I do a lot of stuff on the weekends,” said Prasanna Sampath, a civil engineering graduate student. “If I want to post something I put it off until Saturday because I don’t have time.”
The USPS also is struggling to find the funding to pay $5.4 billion for future retirees’ health benefits.
“Right now, the most immediate need that we have … is to get some relief from the pre-payment of retiree health benefit costs,” Mruk said.
Layoffs are not necessary at this time, he said.
“We haven’t had to resort to layoffs so far,” Mruk said. “We’re hoping we’ll be able to weather the economic storm and be able to absorb the loss in workload.”
Although the USPS might have problems to fix, the proposed solution might not be the best, Sampath said.
“I don’t know how (the USPS) will fix it, but shutting off on Saturdays is certainly not going to help the customers,” he said.
Preliminary studies will be conducted in the next few months as the conversation continues, Mruk said.
“It certainly won’t happen tomorrow, this is something that is certainly several months away,” he said.
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Susan
(08/20/09 7:14pm)Report
I am a city relif carrier in a small town, my job is on the cutting block when the no sat delivery takes effect. I have worked for USPS for 8 years and am really saddened to know that I will be leaving. But my buisness mind tells me No delivery on sat will be one of the smartest things they can do. Most of the carriers in my surrounding offices use sat for overtime or they leave early anyway and use annual leave for that time. The mail volume has drastically dropped in the last 2 years. In my office alone we could easily have 3 routes instead of five. That is less people, less leave,less retirement, less vehicles. C.mon guys I know your not totally blind. When 1 carrier cant even get 4 hours out of a route and another who is hirer on the food chain can’t get the same route done in under 6 . there is a red flag here! And the no mail left behind!! What kind of desk jockey came up with this? ok So lets pay full time carriers everyday overtime to deliver those two pieces of mail. Lets put more miles on these LLV’s And use more gas. That is really making alot of sense! Oh and lets look at the carriers productivity to decide if the routes can be added to. That is really dumb!! How about useing the numbers you get everyday for these city routes and evaluating them under the same rules as rural routes. That is where your money is. three of the city carriers in my office alone could easily use two to two and two and half more hours everyday to their routes. but the current way of evaluating them is to go by the time they waste chatting with customers and sitting under shade trees! Really, this is the change we can expect!