Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Saturday delivery -- good for us?

The House Appropriations Committee has approved an amendment by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA) that would require USPS to study the cost effectiveness and fuel consumption of a five-day delivery system and consumer demand for Saturday postal mail. Kingston calls it a "a perfect example of government waste that is driving up the price at the pump.” He says reducing delivery to five days "would immediately save 20.8 million gallons of gas."

Mike Burns, a letter carrier in Tempe, wrote Your Postal Blog and also thinks it's a good idea.

He said, "I think it's way past time the Postal Service gave a serious look at discontinuing Saturday delivery. Who needs mail six days a week? I know I don't. Now would be the best time to implement the non-Saturday Postal service due largely in part to the sagging economy and gasoline at record highs. Parking the postal vehicles one extra day per week would save the Postal service millions, if not billions of dollars each year. The public would really not care if you think about it. There has never been a better time than NOW to make this happen."

So, what do you think about six day delivery? Click below to give your opinion.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

What about all the people in Rural America that already only receive their mail 3 days a week?? While there is a great savings to be realized by discontinuing Saturday delivery, I also hope it won't be a "one size fits all" solution.

Anonymous said...

is this just home delivery or P.O. Boxes as well, and how about window service on Saturdays?

Anonymous said...

It makes sense. But the flip side is they would still not increase the clerks to move the mail and expect them to do more work in the same amount of time.

They refuse to have enough clerks to move the mail,

The other side is, they will expect carriers to still move all the mail on Monday in the same amount of time and not increase their office or street times.

Something has to give

Anonymous said...

Saturdays are a regular workday
for those that don't have a M-F
schedule. Would it be ok if we
instead cut out Monday delivery.

Anonymous said...

Many good points so far here! Personally, I am a PMR, so Saturdays are my one guaranteed work day each week! I'm sure there are other positions that have Saturday as a regular work day, too. Lots of pros & cons to consider, and I hope no decision is made too hastily. The state of the ecomony sure puts a lot of pressure on things.

Anonymous said...

One advantage we have over the competition is Saturday delivery. Cutting that would mean cutting the service that puts us above the other guys. I think it would be more practical to study the outer delivery areas and offer them p.o. boxes to cut down on the miles traveled by carriers over all.

JT said...

four tens would give carriers more then enough time to deliver heavy mail volume and part timers would still be able to catch the off day during the week that the regular would take off.