Postal Service Pushes To End Saturday Delivery

Fed Ex and USP have demonstrated when you have lobby firms that can donate money to politicians you can make money. Politicians like Rep. Darrell Issa, R- Calif.,require the Post Service to deliver packages door to door for those great examples of capitalism at a below market price. Let’s see how much your mailing costs go up when that stops. And by the way why don’t you stop trying to blame works for asking for a fair wage for a fair days work.

Fed Ex and USP do not do house to house daily delivery of personal mail. The US Postal Service has been around since Benjamin Franklin (and other services before).
The halting of Saturday delivery works for businesses, but not for the everyday public. In addition, the postal carrier is salaried, so there will not be a cost savings in that arena, rightfully so.
Unions are also a part of the American culture which were needed to prevent the heads of companies from mistreating and misusing employees (some have gone a bit overboard lately, corporations are now reaping what they sowed).
I would not want to go out in knee deep snow, slick ice, driving rain, scorching heat, not have two consecutive days off, worry about barking and biting animals, drug infested neighborhoods, and rude people who think a postal carriers job is easier than their job; postal carriers and clerk put up with this and more.

Start charging $1 to deliver a credit card application. That would be at least $25 a month just to my house. Times how many homes in the US?

While we’re on the subject. Let’s give three cheers to the Post Office.
They move tons of mail every day and rarely make a mistake.
Congress does almost nothing and they rarely get anything right.
Maybe we should let the post office run the rest of the government.

Ending saturday delivery will NOT fix the Post Offices problems, and comparing international companies like Fed Ex and UPS, who are THRIVING in China and other countries, to the USPS is rather silly. Of course, I vehemently oppose ANY changes, as do most people who live in rural areas, because Fed Ex and UPS do not ship out here. They contract the USPS to do it, and even then, it’s over twice the cost. The fact remains the USPS is the highest rated in terms of price, shipping times, and shipping accuracy. They deliver 10x the amount of mail UPS does, with twice the workers. So who’s really more efficient? You want to solve the problem? Get rid of the needless management. Take a look at USPS’ org chart for yourself. Stop trying to take away the jobs, and the hours of people who are actually doing the work, those people who are in the weather, who are on the side of the road dealing with the idiot drivers of the world, and who are actually representing the USPS on a daily basis.

I think we should eliminate the postal service altogether and vendor out the mail delivery to some other company possible like UPS.

Stop house to house delivery and set up cluster boxes at the end of the street instead. Since I moved from a rural area, I’ve always gotten my mail at a cluster box at the end of the street, although I notice that a lot of streets in my town still have a mailbox parked at the curb in front of every house. Even with the cost of equipment and installation, they would save money in the long run on gas and vehicle maintenance.

If not for all the junk mail, the post office would not be making any money. My 3-5 stamps every 2 weeks just can’t compete. So I say bump up the 3rd class mail rate slightly, bump up the 1st class stamp slightly,put a freeze on the contract-written bonuses the executives get and keep Saturday pick-up/delivery service.
also, the unions need to relax some of their stricter working rules. We are supposed to be in the union together, not pigeon-holed like managers in cubicles. Look how badly that is working out.

The post office only wants its 76 billion back that it over paid congress through their civil service retirement plan. You know the one? It pays congress their retirement… Don’t do away with Saturday delivery. It will only serve to harm the small businesses that are open and need their mail on weekends. Many times, they can’t run across town to get thir mail 6 days a week at a post office box. Thats what Postal Management wants… Not good for the economy, not good for the future.

bobbaa wrote: “The postal unions are the problem…UPS and FedEx have demonstrated that you can have a profitable mail delivery service.” +++++ The U.S. Post Office has NOT, repeat NOT, spent a dime of taxpayers money in nearly half a century. And if you want something shipped to you, the CHEAPEST, FASTEST way to do it for several years has been the U.S. Postal Service. So how are the unions the problem? Are you one of those people who believe the Middle Class should be reduced to serfs while the rich get richer? It’s not that the public workers get such great benefits – I have cousinswith high school educations retired from companies Conoco-Phillips and Otis Elevator that have better pensions than my teacher’s pension. It’s that the economy has been rigged to cheat most private workers and to funnel 24% of all income to the top 1% compared to 9% pre-Reagan.

Stop talking about it and just do it already. I don’t want mail coming on Saturdays anyhow and neither do most people I know. Much of the time you’re not around and it just sits in the box waiting to get stolen. Please stop delivering on Saturdays, it’s not a service.

No brainer. . . end saturday delievery and double the rate for junk mail

The Postal Service undertook a monsterous building program over the past decade, to the extent that every village in America got a brand new Post Office and the landscape is dotted with thirty thousand square foot “sorting centers”. This was irresponsible to the extreme, and WE paid for it with ever increasing postal rates and now drastic reductions in service. And the same idiots who perpetrated it are still sitting proud in Washington at Postal Headquarters.

First – stop Saturday delivery, only a $1.7 billion savings suits me just fine. Second – Disband the union and equalize benefits to those of the private sector. Third – Forget about class rates, everyone pays the same for delivery – including all the junk mail. Fourth – employees behind the counter have to learn to move faster to get customers in and out of lines. This will buy a few more years before innovation is needed.

First of all ABC was wrong. The Postal Service has not laid off 110,000 workers, and I have not heard of anyone being laid off. People need to get the facts straight. I carried mail for 23 years and it is not as easy as people think, and Goldway doesn’t have a clue how the system works. And for the record Postal Employees are NOT salaried unless you are in management.

Why not start by closing all non-delivering post offices? In the rural county I grew up in, every village has its own post office – but only the post office in the main town delivers.

IMO, cutting Saturday delivery would be fine. I’ve heard the argument that seniors and others waiting on an SS check would be forced to wait longer, when for many they barely make it through the month as it is, but currently, if the 3rd falls on a SUNDAY, the checks go out on the previous FRIDAY, and the same policy would most likely apply if Sat. delivery was eliminated. If anything, they’d get their checks SOONER some months.
And yes, RAISE the price of a stamp SIGNIFICANTLY already. Enough with the few cents every few years silliness. Bump it up to .75 or even $1. It would still be a BARGAIN for the service received, and even for those (like the seniors on fixed income) who rely on the mail to pay bills, the additional cost would not be more than a few bucks a month, if that.
Someone mentioned “cutting out the junk mail”…that is one of their largest revenue streams, actually…they get PAID to deliver that stuff. If anything, they should raise the rates to deliver it to reflect their rising costs.
I am a big supporter of the US postal service and of the workers being paid a living wage. Many seem to forget that not only has this country had a national postal service since virtually our begining, but there are still MANY who rely on it (private, for-profit services are much more costly and not everyone HAS internet, believe it or not).
I can count on one hand (on only a few fingers, actually) the times in my LIFE when the US Postal Service has failed to get something to me or to where-ever I sent it in a timely manner.
The US Postal Service was never meant to be a for-profit enterprise, being more of a public service, but it SHOULD be able to break even and STILL deliver the cheapest service.

“Despite not receiving any taxpayer money…” – That’s an outright lie. The PO gets tons of taxpayer money, directly and indirectly. The Federal budget has a large chunk allotted for them and the PO doesn’t pay taxes, registration fees for their vehicles, and so on.
And they still lose money hand over fist.
The Post Office is slow, ineffective, inefficient, incapable of competing on a level playing field and a money hole. They really are a government agency after all!

What can you expect with all the highly paid managers they are drowning in. No matter how many times the raise the postage rates, they are always in the red. Just like our government with the tax and spend Democrats and Obama spending like a compulsive HSN shopper.
It’s case of two many chiefs and not enough Indians at the USPS.

Contrary to what this article says, the post office’s problems are not the fault of the Internet. If the post office continues to raise rates, it will raise itself out of existence. Now here’s a radical concept–why don’t they LOWER rates??? Businesses that are trying to generate customers always do that. But everytime the post office raises their rates, I try to find other ways to send mail, like the Internet.

Congress tells USPS they are a business and then when they want to curb delivery days or close unprofitable post offices they block it and say it’s a government service. So which is it?

Randy F…I hear you. Our local office is extremely well run (actually any office in other areas I have been in are too). You can thank the GOP and dumbed down tea party for all the uninformed, negative, government bashing comments that appear on this subject and that appear regularly on these forums. Ignorance, negativity, and tearing things down seems to be their main “claims to fame”. And eventually it will cause their movement to destroy itself.

Packages can be delivered privately while information transfer has moved to the internet. Since the President wants high-speed internet in all areas of the country this can be the justification for elimination of the US Postal System.

There is direct deposits for employers and Social Security. There are automatic and internet bill payments with Bills viewed online. Email and texting have eliminated personal snail mail. Magazines and newspapers are going online and can be loaded to reading devices! All that is left is junk mail!

Hold it!!! The post office already gets all those Monday holidays off so getting Saturdays off would give them MANY 3 day weekends off so that when Tuesday came around they would be overloaded and we would not get delivery until dark.

If California would get it’s act together I would not mind

Absolutely mail should stop on Saturday… It is a waste, and trust me, I can wait until the following monday, for that one piece of junk mail…

What other large company has to put up
with a bunch of know-nothing geniuses
telling them how to run their business?
To this day the USPS cannot sell rural mail boxes because a few pols think that doing so would would be unfair to
mom-and-pop stores like WalMart. They
have to get approval for any new products (and usually don’t receive it). They need permission from
Congress to use the pension surplus
($70 billion) to pay off the health
care pre-funding requirement ($35 billion). They cannot even get certain
facts of their case into news stories.
(snipped out by Murdoch’s minions?).
Please get off their backs.

save the postal service? here’s how.. eliminate saturday delivery just in fuel costs of parking a 100,000 vehicles for one day would be huge second,no more door to door delivery cluster boxes on the street corners you would eliminate 10 percent of the carriers.

Before I use FedEX or UPS I for sure use USPS. My overnighted Urgend Marked Credit Cards deliverd by UPS ended up on the staircase for everyone to see and steal. My uniform shirts (not delivert with FedEx) never arrived and on top of it their sad i had them. After theatening with the Police there finally paid for the Shirts. Their never ring the doorbell and their doortags are everything else but not correctly filled out. Who is in fould? I can tell you. We are and companys like T-Mobile and LaneBryant who charge you when you want your own bill in writing to pay the money you owe. We alsway need to have the newest items and do not think about the impact it has. Bookreaders nice but do you think about all the jobs lost? Printing, Bookstores, Salespeople. Selfcheckout nice but you just destroyed the job on the register. All middleclass job dissepear. Not everyone can be a Doctor or a Computerprogramer. We are our worst enemy. And besides that, If you walked 25 year thrue to heat, rainstorm, snow, ice, get chased and bitten by dogs. Walking in areas i would not even walk at daytime. You deserve your pension. I am not a postal worker but I thank you for your service and doesent matter what I make, I will not be angry about your pension.

Time to take the government out of mail delivery. Anything they touch winds up with money issues!

Saturday mail should be eliminated. A large part of this country relies on rural mail delivery. Eliminating Saturday delivery would reduce rural delivery fuel costs by 16% in addition to reduced labor cost – our delivery person is a contract person. She probably would appreciate not working six days per week.

I agree with ending Saturday delivery and trying to cut costs. Putting cluster boxes at the end of a street sound good, unless you have elderly or disabled people who cannot get to that box. Walking to the end of your driveway or a box on your home is doable for them, but not the end of the street.
Postal employees waste time and resources just like any employee at a big company. So they need to understand that if they don’t try to make the company run more economically it could go private.

Aside from lower revenues due to the Internet, the additional cause for USPS’s problems is due directly to Congress. When USPS became independent decades ago, Congress required that the pro-rata portion of pensions incurred when the service was part of the US government (aka, the US Postal Department) be borne in totality by the new independent department. In other words, the government’s portion of the debt was forced upon the USPS. This has become an unsurmountable problem.
The union is not the cause of the problem, but the way Congress has played with budgets for years.
The USPS could become solvent if Congress paid the US government’s share of the pensions, which is in the billions. Of course, they will not do that, and the result is a great public service is being strangled.

Here’s how to save BIG MONEY – There’s STILL LOTS OF MAIL TO DELIVER.
We need MAILMEN + MAILWOMEN TO GET IT TO MAILBOXES.
SUPERVISORS DO NOT GET MAIL TO MAILBOXES.
Their job is to pressure the MAILMEN + MAILWOMEN to work fast, to save money.

If the mailmen + mailwomen START GETTING PAID BY THE PIECE,
RATHER THAN BY THE HOUR, WE CAN GET RID OF:
1. OVERTIME COSTS,
2. HALF OF THE SUPERVISORS, AND
3. ALL OF THE ANGER THAT COMES WITH DELIVERING MAIL.
Mail delivering will become a wonderful job, not only to the
mailmen + mailwomen, but to the supervisors who will remain.
They can make sure all the routes have a truck + make sure
the mail goes out, take a few phone calls during midday, and
see that the trucks came back, and that the mail being mailed out
goes on the big truck.