Five Or Six Day Mail Delivery?
Although many catalog industry experts support Postmaster General John E. Potter’s appeal last month to Congress to let him reduce postal delivery to five days per week, the president/CEO of the Direct Marketing Association is categorically opposed.
DMA president/CEO John A. Greco Jr. wrote in a Feb. 6 letter that “going from six to five day delivery is trimming around the edges instead of going straight to the heart of the problem. A healthy, viable, sustainable Postal Service is in the national interest. We support the USPS efforts to restructure their retiree benefit payments, and encourage them to explore other cost-cutting measures to find savings solutions. We believe that a reduction in service should be looked at only as a last resort.”
During his Jan. 28 testimony before a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee, Potter said: “If current trends continue, we could experience a net loss of $6 billion or more this fiscal year.” Potter asked lawmakers for the authority to drop the six-day schedule, which Congress mandated in 1983, allowing the USPS to suspend delivery on the lightest volume days.
The USPS in 2008 lost 9 billion pieces of volume. Catalog-dominated service categories were down nearly 25% for the year ended Sept. 30, 2008. The USPS recently acknowledged the fiscal year 2009 forecast of 8 billion pieces is low and sees piece count erosion exceeding 12 billion pieces or more.
Potter asked Congress to change the payment schedule for funding its retirees’ health benefits. In 2008, total retiree health benefits costs came to $7.4 billion—nearly 10% of the annual operating budget, he said.
The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 requires accelerated prepayment of future retiree health care costs. The USPS “is the only public or private entity required to prepay health benefit premiums at these extremely high levels,” Potter said in his testimony.
Don Landis, vice president of postal affairs for catalog printer Arandell Corp., says Potter’s request for five-day mail delivery could be just to get Congress to delay the prefunding of retirement and health benefits. “Our customers seem to think [Potter] is not serious” about five-day mail delivery, he notes. “I think he is serious. The advantage to five-day delivery is reduction in cost, “and with the low volume it could probably be pulled off,” Landis says. The disadvantage—especially if it is Tuesday or Wednesday—would be the limited in home dates available for catalogers causing marketing strategy changes.
Also, Landis adds, “the possibility is printer and mailers would have limited drop shipment appointments available causing potentially not meeting an in-home date at all.”
Greco wrote that most DMA members are engaged in multichannel marketing, “and while our other channels show consistently higher growth rates, mail still plays an important role in the overall integrated marketing communications mix. As a marketing community we still rely on the USPS and any degradation of services could have a negative impact on the economy. We believe that a reduction in delivery days could drive some marketers away from using the mailstream which would further reduce mail volume and cause greater strain on the USPS current fixed costs. The solution? The USPS should pursue a fundamental cost restructuring along with stimulus/incentives that would reward marketers to continue to use mail in their multichannel mix.”
Greco added: “Aren’t jobs and positive economic activity what we need these days?”
So, what is the answer?
I agree with the following assessment from Joe Schick, director of postal affairs for printer Quad/Graphics. “Should they be reducing service at a time when they are also going to be increasing prices, albeit at the rate of inflation?” he says. “In a normal time and place we’d all answer no.”
But given the current economic environment, if the USPS can still meet the needs of its customers by reducing mail delivery to five days a week, “why should anyone care?” Schick asks?
“It would be disingenuous for me/Quad to insist that they continue six-day delivery when we would not want to be dictated to by our clients as to when we run our presses and binding lines,” he says. “That is determined by us and is driven by the needs/requirements of our clients. As long as at the end of the day, we have met our obligations to our clients, it should not matter to anyone how it was accomplished.”
February 26th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I am a Postal Employee and I agree we shouldn’t reduce service. The DMA references “in home dates available for catalogers” in a 5 day schedule. The problem is the catalogs aren’t there anymore. There was a time when I delivered several catalogs to every address. Now I see 4 or 5 total on a street of 30 homes.
Part of the thought of going to a 5 delivery is the overall expense to deliver those 5 catalogs is greater than the postage collected. It would be more practical to be able to deliver to every home and utilize the Postal workforce to its fullest. As we do now we deliver to every 3rd home or so 6 days a week due to the lack of mail to those homes. Is 5 days the right way to go? Will it hurt us in the end? We can only hope for a wise decision.
February 26th, 2009 at 3:15 pm
I would just like to know what the USPS intends for the mail carriers to do on that extra day that they would not be delivering mail any more. I’ve not heard this addressed at all. I wonder if this is some way to reduce mail carriers’ job hours. If this is their intention, then yes, it would reduce costs for the USPS, but that’s a lot of people who would be taking a huge pay cut. We are already seeing an economic decline because Americans are losing hours/wages and this would continue that trend I’m afraid.
Also, after working at a carrier station for almost five years I can tell you that there are certain days of the week that are already especially heavy (Monday and any Tuesday after a Monday holiday). These are days from hell because the mail hasn’t been delivered on Sunday or Sunday/Monday Holiday. There is SO MUCH mail on these days that it takes overtime to get it all delivered or sometimes it has to be delivered the following day. It makes absolutely NO SENSE to me to cause this to be the situation twice a week when it’s already a problem once a week.
There are other ways that the USPS could reduce their costs without reducing service further. We’ve already seen a decline in the amount/quality of service in recent years. If we want to continue to hold the public’s confidence as being reliable we need to be looking at other options. The USPS should be listening to and taking very seriously the suggestions that the various Postal Unions have brought to the table. We are all in this together and we certainly don’t want to go down in flames!
February 27th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
post office is losing money, plans in progess to cut medical and retirement benefits and end their contributions to the trift saving program. eliminate one day of delivery would cut the workforce by one/sixth [about 45,000 jobs @ $50,000+hb&retirement + ot]. YOU DO THE MATH.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:04 am
The USPS was given a mandate to work as a business. This is not an easy task for a company who sells only a service. The USPS has to deal with customers that want cheaper rates and with goverment officials who want better service. Cutting to a five day delivery would save the USPS approximately 5 billion dollars a year, which sounds very good on the surface. The only problem there, is that it would not be money that the USPS could use to improve the service. It would just reduce the debt. While I like the idea of restructuring the way the retirement benefits are funded, I do not like the little clauses included in HR 22 that would let the service use money that is already in the fund for emergencies. If they were to allow the service to suspend payments to the fund for two years it would be a savings of approximately 5.3 billion dollars per year that they could use to survive this economic crisis. The service could raise the rates on non-profit and business mailings to make them more competitive with the average customer. The problem there is that big business owns the politicians that rule the service with their bribes, I mean campain funds and lobyists. Huge mailing houses make millions of dollars every day off of USPS delivery of the mail because goverment is controlled by their contributions. They pay half of what you, the average american, pays. The public gets a .02 cent raise in postage and big business gets a .01 cent raise. Then the carrier on the street or the clerk at the window hears the question of WHY??. Write your congress and sentate and stop all this money trafficking in Washington. Lets make it illegal to bribe a fedral official like it used to be. This would be a good start to freeing the USPS from the holds of big business. The goverment want the service to run as a profit making business and then saddles them down with outside interests controlling the pricing. I always thought that a private business sold their product at the prices they set, but this country is turning CAPITALISM into the next communism. The next step will be that if you want to open a small business, you will have to pay all kinds of money to the goverment for permission to open that business. Oh, it already works that way. This country was founded as A REPUBLIC, not a democracy. It was founded on the rights of the individual to live free. Free the postal service and the country and let true capitalism flourish. Lets stop socialism here, let our country grow.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:41 pm
The mail carrier solution is easy, they would no longer have Sunday plus rotating days off, they would now have Sunday plus whatever the new day off would be, probably Tuesday. That would not be ideal for carriers because they would always have split days off work.
Drop shipment problem is also easy, drop shipment scheduling does not need to be changed. The Post Office would still have a Sunday like staffing on this new off day and accepting drop shipments should not be a problem on that day, the only change would be that the drop shipments delivery date would be delayed by one day.
Last but not least. Post Office can plan all they want to stop contributing to the TSP, but until they negotiate with the union they will continue to match TSP, at least until the current contract expires. Postal Employees better hope that the economy recovers before then or arbitration will not be kind to the employees come contract time.
I also wish congress would either back off and let the Postal Service run as a business just like their competition is able to run like a business.
January 17th, 2010 at 9:17 am
I agree with Mr Ozzie, As a letter carrier I get a week end off every six weeks with rotating days off. If the postal service went to Sunday and then Tuesday off my quality of life would take another hit. I for one would be pleased to have SAT and Sunday off like most regular working Americans. But no one really cares what the average worker wants. The union has their underlined mission, which is to stay in business. The upper Postal staff has their goal, make more money to justfy their bonuses. The Postal Service has always been about customer Service, but lately it has been more about the money. If they were really serious about saving money they could get rid of the dead beats in my office that have no job, because of limited duty. They could save $150,000 a year and thats in just one office?????????????How many offices have limited duty people just walking arround getting a check. If you ask management it’s the unions fault, if you ask the union it’s managements fault.
March 2nd, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I am a postal worker and believe the 5 day delivery will kill the postal service as we know it. The money that could be saved by doing this is far less than
what could be saved just by getting rid of the people on light duty that have been there for more than 1 year. Some of them are truely hurt but the most are riding the coats of the employees that do there job as well. I hope that smarter heads will prevale in this situation. If not then we are all headed down the road to destruction of the US Postal Service. Call your political representatives and tell them NO on the 5 day delivery debokal.
March 18th, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I have been a rca for three years now. Changing to 5 day delivery makes no point to improve the financial problems.Due to the heavey amount of mail that will come from 5 day delivery, It will send the regular carriers into over time,
requiring more money spent to adapt. that could continue 6 day service,and not put all the rca`s and trc`s out of a job. What about the customers???? many are home only on saterdays to recive important mail,parcels, reg. cert. express and so on.
Many customers recive medical supplies , meds , ect. on saterdays. changing to a
5 day delivery will impact everyone in a negitive way. And usps is sure to lose bussiness in the shipments, considering no saterday delivery. Hopefully more thought can be put into this, weighing the odds it is a bad idea…
March 24th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
It is very important that the postoffice continues to deliver mail 6 days/wk.
Let’s keep the postal system alive. If the government needs to bail out the post office then it needs to do so as it’s so very important to keep the post office up and running. It’s been a good system of delivery for many years…..let’s not destroy that now.
I know a lot of postal carriers and they all WORK EXTREMELY HARD. It would be a shame if they lost their jobs or we didn’t get mail six days/week.
March 24th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
KEEP THE POST OFFICE DELIVERYING MAIL SIX DAYS PER WK. IT’S VITAL.
March 29th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Postmaster General John E Potter needs to get in touch with the people who actually deliver the mail. He would be surprised at the suggestions they would have for him.
March 31st, 2010 at 12:57 am
I think the postal service has done gone crazy. if you reduce days you reduce revenue. if they would look into retiree pensions they would find where all the money is. and paying some $60.00 an hour to deliver a .44 stamped envelope is just plain dumb!!
better management would make a world of difference. they need to talk to the employees and they will tell them how all these little rules are really breaking us!
May 2nd, 2010 at 9:34 pm
It’s unbelievable how many nasty blogs i’ve read from people who don’t care about keeping 6 day delivery- many refering to saturday as “junk mail-day anyway” etc. etc.
While it may seem there is more “junk” on saturday, I can certainly say that there are many,many important pieces delivered on that DAY as on any other day. These people forget that 3 or 10 doors down the street; someone is getting a birhtday card,
someone else is getting some magazines, a check maybe with that junk mail-On and on the cycle continues…YES the Postal Service is loosing mail volume, BUT to cut delivery, would only serve to interupt the cycle and ruin the service all the more..