As I sifted through the envelopes, a match flared and cast a brief glow on a figure leaning in the dark beside me. Swarthy, sneering, hunched in a leather blazer with a familiar eagle design embroidered on one breast.
“Nice box you got there. Be a real shame if someone stuffed it.”
That’s what he said!
I was listening to NPR yesterday, and a woman whose name and position I don’t recall said that cutting service is a poor way to resolve the problem. She said this move would accelerate the Post Office’s demise.
My SO had not heard of the Saturday non-deliveries. When I told her she said, ‘They raise rates and then cut service? Screw them! I’ll stop using them unless I absolutely have to.’
This was my response. All the new neighbourhoods in Calgary don’t have home delivery at all - they have superboxes, where you go get your own mail. Somehow they survive. 
There used to be twice a day deliveries? Really?? Tell me about this - I have seriously hever heard anything about such a thing. When WAS this?
The post office does a fantastic job of mail delivery, far better than any private company has, or could for the price. They get mail to places that UPS and FedEx has never heard of, reliably and inexpensively.
The only real problem that the USPS has is that a segment of Congress is ideologically opposed to its existence, and determined to sink it with deliberately burdensome requirements, unlike those any other agency has to work under.
Shit, we can dream of health care as effective as the post office.
Cutting Saturday service is a damn shame, and should have been unnecessary.
The USPO used to have twice a day deliveries at least in dense city areas. It was discontinued in the 1950s:
If they can cut costs by eliminating delivery for one day, think how much they could save if they eliminated 4 more, and only delivered one day per week? They’d be rich!
A woman moved to a very rural location. She asked how often mail is delivered. She understands that mail is delivered ‘tri-weekly’, and comments that three times per week is acceptable. The postmaster says, ‘We try weekly. If we don’t make it, we try again the following week.’
From about the 1880s through the 1950s, there was twice-daily delivery to city residences, and as many as four deliveries per day to businesses.
I agree with everything you said except the last line. I think that reform of the ridiculous requirements would go far to put the Postal Service back in black, and even with those artificial burdens it’s a great value, but we also don’t need Saturday service any more. Perhaps we could bring back Special Delivery, that would deliver on weekends for an additional charge, and those letters could be delivered along with the packages. But other than time-sensitive deliveries, I don’t see that big a deal with Saturday deliveries: I always thought it a bit wasteful, myself.
Why not cut Wednesdays too, then? Why not deliver only on Mondays?
The whole point of the post office is to move the mail, basically continuously. We traditionally rest many parts of our society on Sunday, but apart from that I want the mail to move.
Cutting a day, any day, is something like sabotage; it reduces the value of the agency more than it reduces the cost. I’m sure that, in some minds, this is exactly the point.
Would you support dropping Wednesday and Thursday deliveries also? Who needs 'em?
Oh, definitely. I also support raising the marginal tax rates to 100%, and the drinking age to 55.
Thanks you guys!! I learn something new every day!
No problem, but I posed a serious question. How many days per week is the best number? There no magic to 5; we were just used to 6. If mail volume continues to decline, maybe once or twice a week is fine. Maybe not, and that’s why I’m asking. What’s your comfort level?
And I just thought of an unintended consequence of the Saturday delivery change. Our local newspaper is printed twice a week and arrives in all mailboxes on Wednesday and Saturday. After August 1, the newspaper may have to adjust their publication schedule or become increasingly marginalized by other media.
It’s ironic that I cancelled home newspaper delivery to a non-USPO “mail tube” a few years ago because it arrived 5 hours later in the day than the US mail did. Maybe we’ll have to revive that kind of delivery.
I guess I’m confused as to why people are glad they’re cutting Saturday service. Even if you only get junk mail and never receive any other mail, what is the difference if you get 3 pieces of junk mail on Saturday and 4 on Monday? Now you’ll just get 7 pieces on Monday.
I still get Netflix by mail, so I check the mail on days that I’m expecting a DVD. I’ll also check daily if it’s near my birthday or a holiday since I still get some greeting cards. Otherwise, I’ll check the mail every couple of days or so. But, I’d rather empty it out over a weekend than know i"m getting extra mail on Monday.
If I actually thought the service cut would help the postal service, I might be more inclined to support it. But, as others have pointed out, it is congressional meddling that has caused the postal service to lose money, not email and electronic billing.
carriers do routes long term and get good at it. also there are fewer business routes than residential routes. you would eliminate a lot of developed efficiency.
We could cut down on more, probably, but one is definitely doable. Cutting more than one day might be cutting too much, but cutting one definitely isn’t.
I personally recieve less than half the mail (including junk mail) than I did even just 6 years ago, and I don’t rely on time-sensitive physical letters. But I acknowledge that my experience is not universal.
Plus, others have brought up the union question for why saturday cuts might not save us money (i.e. “will they have to pay someone to NOT delivery mail on Saturday anyway, due to union agreements?”) While I’m not sure if that’s true for Saturday, I wonder if it has a chance to be true for mid-week deliveries, since you’d be taking away a consecutive 5-day 40-hour work day for some delivery people.
So while I personally would not complain about axing at least one more additional day from the week, I think one is a slam dunk.
Similarly, do you support twice-a-day delivery? If not, why?
It’s a cost to the taxpayers for a marginal benefit (not to mention, in the bigger picture, a waste of resources.) Similarly, some people think that we shouldn’t get rid of the penny and think that people opposed to the penny just hate it for some reason, when the actual reason is also expense in the face of a lack of an actual need.
Same here. I suspect those of us who are unhappy about the loss of Saturday delivery are still receiving things other than junk mail in our mailboxes. Heck, I’d prefer 7 day a week mail delivery!
I’d b less unhappy if the decline in service was being prompted entirely by declining usage, but it’s not. It’s almost entirely caused by ridiculous laws passed by a Congress that is ideologically hostile to any shared public services.
(At least is sounds like the actual Post Offices will be open for business on Saturdays. I’d be livid if that had changed, as going in at any other time means having to arrive late to work.)
In particular a lot of people have medicine delivered by mail. Elderly people and people in rural areas are likely to have a harder time finding an alternative, and medicine is often needed very quckly.