Falling mail volume and soaring red ink may soon doom Saturday mail delivery and prompt three-day-a-week delivery within 15 years, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warns.
Donahoe’s forecast is based on a projected $8.3 billion loss this year as the drift from paper to electronic communication hammers the Postal Service. “On Sept. 30,” he told the USA TODAY editorial board Tuesday, “I won’t be able to pay my bills.”
Chief among them: a $5.5 billion payment due Sept. 30 to cover future retirees’ health benefits.
Mail carriers have been making rounds six days a week since the 19th century. After postmasters started talking about cutting back, Congress mandated the six-day delivery in 1983.
Donahoe wasn’t specific about how soon he would like to reduce service but said he thinks Congress, struggling with the federal budget, will be more open to the idea now. He said a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last year helped move the discussion along. More than half of those polled had no problem with losing Saturday mail.
The Postal Service estimates the move would save $3.1 billion a year.
Donahoe said the idea has “a much better chance today than a year ago. I don’t know if I’d say ‘likely’ yet.”
Asked about the long term, Donahoe said, “At some point, we’ll have to move to three” days a week of mail delivery, possibly in 15 years.
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6 Responses
Will this reduce junk mail ?
Good riddance to Saturday delivery. Welcome Kavod Shabbos!
The mail system is corrupt! I get every day every ones mail.. except for my mine.. they are understaffed and staffed with the cheapest and dumbest – dont know how to read a word of English! I am fed up with them! Anyone else having the same?
3. Every day?? Everyone else’s mail?! Wow, so you have my mail!
Quit the over exaggeration!!
Actually the US postal service is more efficient and less expensive than most in the world. Obviously, we can do without Saturday delivery, though!
This sounds as serious as announcing the ice trucks would stop making deliveries, and when the blacksmith’s in town either quit (or at least stopped shodding horses). How did we survive when the typewriter repair shops closed?
How will we get our junk mail? Our schnorring letters? Our Netflixes (which I’m sure most gedolim don’t approve of).