Postal Service edges toward cutting Saturday delivery

[Raineyrocks]

This would suck!  I love getting mail on Saturdays. 

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/29/postal.service/index.html?hpt=T2

Postal Service edges toward cutting Saturday delivery
By the CNN Wire Staff
March 29, 2010 1:25 p.m. EDT

The fewest mail deliveries take place on Saturdays, a day when more than a third of U.S. businesses are closed.
Washington (CNN) -- Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night may stay the nation's letter carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but e-mail and the recession may stop their Saturday deliveries.

Under a plan to be delivered Tuesday to its regulator, the U.S. Postal Service announced Monday it would cut Saturday delivery beginning in the first half of next year.

"If the Postal Service takes no action, it could face a cumulative $238 billion shortfall by the year 2020," the service said in plans given to reporters.

The Postal Service said the cutback would save about $3.1 billion in the first year and as much as $5.2 billion per year by 2020; the Postal Regulatory Commission estimated annual savings of $1.9 billion.

Saturday delivery was selected for elimination because that is the lightest-volume delivery day of the week and a day when more than a third of U.S. businesses are closed.

Still, Express Mail deliveries would continue and post offices that are open Saturdays would remain so, the Postal Service said.

Congress would have to approve any change, and six months notice would be given before any move being made, it said.

Mail volume has dropped from a peak of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion last year, and volume is predicted to continue to fall, the Postal Service said. "Quite simply, there is much less mail to be delivered, yet costs to deliver the mail continue to rise," it said.

[AntonLee]

no big deal to me.  That just means bills will come on Monday.

[Lloyd Danforth]

I know how much everybody loves my 'when I was a kid' stories

When I was a kid they had just stopped twice a day mail delivery. We did have twice a day delivery during the two weeks before Christmas. Stamps, still, after about 50 years were 3 cents, about 1% of what a clerk or office worker might have made an hour.

[AntonLee]

just got my mail.  Just another card from the Census, this time asking if I want to work for them.  I could make up to $22.50*

[Lloyd Danforth]

If you accept the job, be creative!

[Raineyrocks]

no big deal to me.  That just means bills will come on Monday.

I guess your right but I still really look forward to Saturday mail.   I guess I'm just so used to it. 

[Raineyrocks]

I know how much everybody loves my 'when I was a kid' stories

When I was a kid they had just stopped twice a day mail delivery. We did have twice a day delivery during the two weeks before Christmas. Stamps, still, after about 50 years were 3 cents, about 1% of what a clerk or office worker might have made an hour.

Did they have cars or deliver the mail via horse and buggy? 

[Fluff and Stuff]

This is excellent news.  The shrinking of government, especially a department with very little use, is usually great news.  This will help keep federal and local taxes down.  This may reduce the rate of increase for federal and local taxes.

[WithoutAPaddle]

I know how much everybody loves my 'when I was a kid' stories

When I was a kid they had just stopped twice a day mail delivery. We did have twice a day delivery during the two weeks before Christmas. Stamps, still, after about 50 years were 3 cents, about 1% of what a clerk or office worker might have made an hour.

And if we dropped a letter in the Post Office "Local" mail slot before 8:00 AM, it would be put in the recipient's box the same day.  That was the procedure well into the 1970s.

Eric: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?

MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.

GC: A cup ' COLD tea.

EI: Without milk or sugar.

TG: OR tea!

MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.

EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.

GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.

TG: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.

MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, "Money doesn't buy you happiness."

EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.

GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!

TG: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!

MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.

EI: Well when I say "house" it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.

GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!

TG: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.

MP: Cardboard box?

TG: Aye.

MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!

TG: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife

EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing "Hallelujah."

MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.

ALL: Nope, nope...

[PattyLee loves dogs]

All we need to do is eliminate the laws preventing people from competing with snail mail, and you could get mail in your window by drone helicopter on Sundays at 3 in the morning if you wanted to. (and it wouldn't cost the taxpayer over ten billion a year to subsidize it, either).

Personally, getting the bills less often would be fine... I think I'd sign up with a mail-delivery service that came once a month, by pony 

[John]

Good ... !
To bad the government wouldn't just get out of it all together.
... etc. ... etc. ...!