U.S. Postal Service might cut Saturday delivery

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.