Weekends off: Postal plan would end Saturday deliveries 

WATERLOO - Until 1950, residences and businesses across the U.S. got mail deliveries twice a day. Next year, if the U.S. Postal Service's latest austerity plan receives Congressional approval, Saturday deliveries will cease.

The Post Office, which has received no direct taxpayer subsidy since 1981, is staring at a cumulative budget shortfall of $238 billion during the next 10 years, according to Postmaster General John Potter.

Earlier this month, Potter introduced what the department described as "an aggressive plan of cost cutting, increased productivity, and an array of legislative and regulatory changes necessary" to keep the country's postal system viable.

"The crisis we're facing gives us an historic opportunity to make changes that will lay the foundation for a leaner, more market responsive Postal Service that can thrive far into the future," Potter said in a news release. He said a comprehensive reorganization of the system was necessary.

Mail volume is projected to fall from 177 billion in 2009 to 150 billion in 2020, according to the USPS. Revenue generated by First Class mail is projected to fall from 51 percent now to about 35 percent 10 years hence.

"The Postal Service is between a rock and a hard place," said Richard Watkins, a USPS spokesman based in Kansas City, Mo. "We're not tax-supported. We can't raise prices because that will, in turn, drive away business which we desperately need. We have to have a business model that will work for the Postal Service."

That model requires simply raising the price on stamps. In fact, the USPS did just that only last year, boosting the price of a first-class stamp from 42 to 44 cents.

Personnel, the USPS says, likely won't be a huge issue, since it expects to lose about 300,000 workers to retirement in the next decade.

The agency's troubles don't stem entirely from the Internet, or even privately owned competitors like United Parcel Service or Federal Express, both of whom share some logistical operations with the postal service, Watkins said.

"But the two-fisted punch of electronic diversion and the deepest recession since the Great Depression really put us in a bind in terms of revenue as a self-supporting independent branch of the government," he said. "Something's got to give."

That "something" is Saturday mail delivery.

And, it will force changes at some local businesses that depend on Saturday service.

Three local newspapers - the Oelwein Daily Register, Independence Bulletin-Journal and Cedar Falls Times, all properties of West Frankfort, Ill.-based Community Media Group - are currently delivered to subscribers on Saturday.

"I have no idea yet; we just brought it up at a meeting yesterday," Publisher Deb Weigel said Wednesday when asked what the company would do if Saturday mail service stopped.

Consumers who expect documents like bank statements or wage earners expecting checks to be delivered on Saturdays would see changes, as well.

Area banking officials say balance and other financial information is available to customers online, anyway.

"As more people transition to electronic, it takes that right out of the equation," said Mike McCrary, vice president of marketing for Lincoln Savings Bank.

Some wage earners who have received paychecks in the mail on Saturdays will certainly be affected, said Kari McKay-Widdel, operations manager for Pitney-Bowes Presort Services in Cedar Rapids , which handles about 300,000 pieces of mail per day.

"It's still going to be moving," she said. "But we do have customers we process paychecks for on Fridays, and their employees are still going to expect those checks. Those companies will have to look at internal changes."

Eliminating Saturday mail deliveries wouldn't be the first major change in the mail system in recent decades.

In 1970, under the Postal Reorganization Act, the old U.S. Post Office Department, was given 20 years to become an independent, self-supporting agency.

The organization made the transition in 11.

"The new, independent postal service was processing and delivering more and more mail volume every year, and for a little over 30 years, it worked real well," Watkins said.

But the system has not been able to keep up with costs, he said.

"As our delivery network continues to grow, meeting more delivery stops, between 1.5 to 2 million new addresses we have to go to each week, it takes more people, it takes more buildings and vehicles and fuel," he said. "So, our fixed costs have continued to grow. That was not as much a problem as long as mail volume continued to grow, as it did through 2006."

But, he said, volume has been trailing off.

Watkins said surveys indicate dropping Saturday deliveries is perceived as a lesser evil than other possible alternative austerity moves.

"A Rasmussen survey showed that almost 70 percent of business and residential customers prefer going to five-day delivery rather than more radical moves like raising prices or going back to the federal subsidy," he said.