U.S. Postal Service considers eliminating Saturday delivery

All the rain and sleet and gloom of night, well that's just Monday through Friday, it seems. More daunting than weather and darkness is the dwindling number of customers and revenue.

Citing budget shortfalls, the U.S. Postal Service announced this morning a plan to stem the financial bleeding. Among the initiatives Postmaster General John E. Potter will recommend today to the Postal Regulatory Commission: curtail the delivery of mail to five days a week.

Last year, the post office lost $3.8 billion, Potter said, and the shortfall could reach $238 billion over the next 10 years if no action is taken. The last three months of 2009 - the first quarter of the service's fiscal year - ended with a loss of nearly $300 million.

Part of the blame is the recession, officials said, and part is that customers are using electronic alternatives to pay bills and send letters.

Most Tampa Bay residents who took a poll today said the proposal to dump Saturday delivery made sense.

"That sounds good to me," said Clarence Wilks, a resident of Brandon, who was not part of the poll, but who said he's often wondered why the post office hasn't taken that initiative before.

He said he doesn't depend on mail pickup or delivery on Saturday, "Not whatsoever," he said.

Tampa Bay residents overwhelmingly said that stopping mail delivery on Saturday was a bad idea, according to a SurveyUSA News Poll of 500 random people today.

Sixty-eight percent said they disagreed with the proposal to shut down Saturday delivery. Twenty-eight percent said they would discontinue delivery and 3 percent weren't sure.

The poll revealed that 57 percent believed the post office was run well compared to 36 percent that said the service was poorly run.

Postal officials said there are some indicators that say a slow recovery is under way, but the volume of mail may never be as high as it was before e-mail and online bill paying took hold.

This year, the post office will deliver a projected 167 billion pieces of mail, officials said. That's 10 billion fewer than 2009.

Mail volume is projected to fall to 150 billion pieces in 2020, with a 37 percent decline in first-class mail alone. First-class mail, which accounts for 51 percent of the service's revenue, is expected to provide 35 percent of the revenue in 2020.

Once the Postal Regulatory Commission gets the recommendation, it will schedule public hearings in Washington, D.C., and across the United States. Ultimately, curtailing the days of mail delivery will require an act of Congress. Federal law requires delivery six days a week.

Potter said the proposals could save the post office $123 billion - about half the projected deficit - over that time.

Besides the recent proposal to consolidate branches and today's recommendation to stop Saturday delivery, Potter proposed these changes:

• Restructure health-benefit payments for retirees to be consistent with the rest of the federal government.

• Modernize customer access by providing services at more alternative locations, such as grocery stores, pharmacies and retail centers. This includes expanding access through self-service kiosks and the Internet.

• Adjust the workforce to respond to the changing demand patterns; more than 300,000 employees are eligible to retire over the next decade.

• Adjust prices for popular mailing products based on demand and costs rather than cap prices for all classes based on inflation.

• Increase the price of mailing letters and packages. This proposal will be made next year.

• Permit the service to introduce products and allow it to better respond to changing customer needs and compete more effectively in the marketplace.

"Lifestyles and ways of doing business have changed dramatically in the last 40 years, but some of the laws that govern the postal service have not," Potter said today in a prepared statement. "These laws need to be modernized to reflect today's economic and business challenges and the dramatic impact the Internet has had on American life."

This month, the post office said 162 offices across the nation - including two in Tampa - are under review for possible consolidation with other branches. The local offices are in Seminole Heights and Port Tampa.

The consolidation review began last summer with an examination of about 3,300 stations and branches in urban and suburban areas, with an eye toward branches that are relatively close to each other.

There are more than 36,000 post offices, stations and branches in the United States, and the number of customers who use a post office is dwindling, officials say. To cut costs, the postal service has farmed out duties including sale of stamps, which now are available at more than 56,000 alternative locations, such as supermarkets, drug stores, and other retailers.

Additionally, nearly 18,000 ATMs are equipped to sell stamps.

In the 2009, officials said, nearly 30 percent of postal retail transactions took place in locations other than a post office.

All the talk about cutting Saturday delivery is preliminary, said Gary Sawtelle, the U.S. Postal Service spokesman in Tampa.

"No decisions have been made on that," he said this morning. "It all still has to play out."

He expects that most postal customers will not raise a ruckus about the plans to stop Saturday deliveries.

"A lot of customers are ambivalent about it," he said. Plus, the plan calls for post offices to remain open Saturdays, so customers with rented boxes will get delivery.

Mail carriers said they doubt the cost-cutting measure will ever be enacted.

"They've been talking for quite awhile about it," said Jim Good, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers Tampa Branch 599. "Congress is not on their side as of yet. There always has been six-day delivery."

He agreed that the general public doesn't seem to care one way or the other.

"But your mailers, your businesses, the banks - they care," he said. "It's just a matter of whether or not [the postmaster general] can convince enough people in Congress to overturn something that's been going on for over 200 years."

He said by cutting Saturday delivery, the post office would open the door to competitors, like FedEx and UPS. "I'm sure that they are saying, 'If they won't do it, we'll do it.' " Good said. "That's a concern as well."

By eliminating weekend delivery, he said, one-sixth of the letter carrier positions would go with it.