(Henry Diltz/Corbis)
Five Days of Mail?
United States Postal Service thinks about cutting service
You may soon be making one less trip to your mailbox during the week. The United States Postal Service (USPS) currently delivers your mail Monday through Saturday, six days a week. But tough economic times and changes in the way people communicate have led the postal service to consider cutting delivery to five days.
The post office has seen a major drop in the volume, or the number of items it delivers, over the course of a year. The USPS delivered 202 billion items in 2008. That's almost 10 billion fewer items than in 2007.
The reason for the drop in volume is electronic mail, or e-mail. More people than ever are opting to send personal and business messages by e-mail, instead of on paper via "snail mail."
Postmaster General John E. Potter told Congress last week that the USPS lost $2.8 billion in 2008. He says the agency could lose more than $6 billion before 2009 is over.
The price to send first-class mail is scheduled to go up this May. (The current price of a first-class stamp is 42 cents.) The USPS hasn't yet announced how much the increase in price will be. But postal officials are afraid that even with an increase in rates, they still won't be able to pay their bills.
The Postmaster General told Congress that six-day delivery "may simply prove to be unaffordable."
The USPS is currently required by law to deliver mail six days a week. Potter has asked Congress to lift that requirement.
"The ability to suspend delivery on the lightest delivery days, for example, could save dollars in both our delivery and our processing and distribution networks," he said.
If Congress does allow the cutback in mail delivery, it doesn't mean that Saturday delivery will go away. The Postmaster General says they would skip the day when the lightest volume of mail is delivered. According to studies done by the USPS, the day with the lightest volume is Tuesday.
"We have to make adjustments quickly to keep the ship afloat," the Postmaster General told USA Today. "We have to weather the storm of the bad economy first and figure out how traditional mail fits into an electronic world."
The USPS has long promised that "neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night" will stop postal workers from delivering the mail. That standard of service should remain true. They'll just be delivering that service one day less a week.
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