There is another rate increase coming soon in the price of postage for first class mail, YET AGAIN !!. Didn’t we just have a rate increase ? Isn’t there some other way to keep the cost of delivery down.
I have just read that it has been suggested by a post office study that they eliminate Tuesday deliveries to cut costs because, now get this… Tuesday is a day when mail flow is light.
What about Saturday mail delivery? Do you need mail on Saturday? I certainly don’t. It’s more of a pain-in-the-neck than anything. Half the time I forget to go out and get it. And the other half of the time its just junk mail anyway which I can just as easily discard on the following Monday.
What about businesses, would they rather not get mail on a mid week work day or Saturday? Gosh let me conduct a multi millisecond study of my own on that question.
Result: My study indicates that businesses would rather get mail on Tuesday than Saturday.
Let’s take it a step further. Why not have delivery on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. What is there that comes by mail that is so critical that we couldn’t get it a day later anyway as the post office is suggesting is acceptable by eliminating Tuesday deliveries?
I’m thinking ………………….still thinking………………………..and thinking.
I can’t come up with anything.
Wait “day old chicks” sent by Priority Mail!
Wait the delivery time on Priority Mail is 2-3 business days so that would still work.
The entire USPS system would not be shut down for the non-delivery day(s) just the home/business delivery. Mail would be shuttled around from point A to point B as usual. It might just have to wait an extra day to be delivered.
But what happens to all the mail carriers that are now working six days a week. That’s the real problem. Just stopping Saturday deliveries would reduce their workload by 16.6% and would justify a reduction in pay of the same amount. They would then have a normal weekend too.
For the Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule it might be appropriate to have each of two carriers deliver to each route on delivery days splitting it in half to maintain the same mail volume per carrier. Then by means of retirement and attrition the number of carriers could be slowly reassigned to modified delivery routes which fit their dilivery capacity more closely. My feeling is that the amount of first class mail delivered will become less in the future, “junk mail” whell that is a different story but it certainly does not require First Class delivery treatment..
You can argue that this will put people out of work or at least reduce their income significantly but as prices go higher and higher for sending a letter or card so will there be less and less sent. With all the methods now at our disposal to pay bills and communicate with people electronically I don’t see why anyone would spend almost $.50 to send out a piece of paper unless absolutely necessary.
Another option leaving all else “as is” would be to really raise the rates on “junk mail”. We don’t need it and most of us that receive it don’t want it anyway…that’s why we call it “junk mail” isn’t it?
Let’s end the stupidity of the Saturday delivery of junk mail…….