USPS cutting losses, targets Saturday delivery

Leaders at the Postal Service say they're going to ask Congress to end Saturday mail delivery next year in order to save money. The formal proposal could come soon in the new year.

Pat Donahoe, Deputy Postmaster General, told the Federal Drive the Saturday elimination is what the customers would rather have.

"Interestingly enough, Monday's our heaviest delivery day, and it goes right down the week: Tuesday's second, Wednesday's third, right down the week. Saturday is by far the lightest day. The other thing that's interesting is a lot of... business mailers target to stay away from Saturday because what they know is people with busy lives in America today tend to read their mail much more during the week and much less on Saturday. So that's the feedback we've gotten back as we've reached out to mailing customers and said 'How would Saturday be as the day as we eliminated?' Almost to a customer they tell us that's the best day to eliminate."

USPS has been debating a shorter delivery week for some time, but now they're preparing to pitch the idea formally to Congress. Donahoe says a 6-day delivery week just isn't cost-effective. "One of the problems we face is if you go to a house with one piece or 10 pieces it costs you the same amount of money," said Donahoe.

Donahoe said once the reality had been faced that something had to be done, customers spoke out loud and strong about their preferance. "A lot of feedback from customers so far has been about 70% to 30 saying 'Hey, don't raise our postage rates. We can do with the 5-day delivery'," said Donahoe.

The Deputy Postmaster General said the plan now is to move to a 5-day delivery, with post offices open 6 days a week. Delivery will continue to Post Office boxes on a 6-day schedule, so if customers "want to rent a box they can get delivery that way too," said Donahoe.

The USPS ended fiscal 2009 with nearly $4 billion dollars in red ink, and that number could double in 2010. Total mail volume was 202 billion items last year, over 9 billion less than the year before, the largest single volume drop in history. Donahoe said the volume of mail has dropped about 22% over the past three years, which would be "worth more than a day of delivery".