New Delivery Schedule For Postal Service

Posted on Tuesday, February 19, 2013 at 1:45 pm

The United States Postal Service will have a new schedule starting in August that will end the delivery of letters and first-class mail on Saturdays. Cutting out mail delivery on Saturdays is expected to save the Postal Service approximately $2 billion annually. Package delivery, however, will continue to take place six days a week, and any mail addressed to P. O. boxes will still be delivered on Saturdays.

“The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America’s changing mailing habits,” said Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe. “We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings.”

All post offices that are currently open on Saturdays will remain open on Saturdays. The schedule change comes in part as a result of the rise in more contemporary methods of message delivery, such as email and other Internet services. With mail delivery declining, the Postal Service has long been in favor of making the move to a five-day delivery schedule for both mail and package delivery.

Package delivery has escaped the cut this time, though, due to the recent 14 percent increase in volume since 2010. The Postal Service’s projections show that package delivery will continue to grow throughout the coming decade, and these findings ultimately led to the decision to keep package delivery doing six days a week.

The Postal Service’s market research, as well as independent research, points out that almost 7 out of 10, or 70 percent, of Americans are in favor of the switch to five-day delivery which would allow the Postal Service to reduce costs in its effort to return the organization to financial stability.

The announcement about the delivery service was made to give residential and business customers enough notice to make any necessary adjustments before the new five-day mail delivery is implemented in August.

 

 

Copyright 2013 Lakeway Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without written permission.
© Lakeway Publishers, Inc. Privacy Policy