That's the prevailing conventional wisdom, but it doesn't take the facts into account.
Saturday is not a "slow" mail day. The volume of mail delivered is roughly the same as any weekday.
Monday is a very heavy mail day. All the letters, magazines, and junk continue to flow through the system on Sunday even though there's no delivery. Mondays are hard.
Now, as the plan goes, we will add Saturday's mail to Sunday's and Monday's and -- just like the underpants gnomes planned -- profit will result. And don't even mention three-day weekends.
The mail volume on Mondays will now be crushing. Either more workers will need to be brought in to sort and deliver it [eliminating the savings] or it will simply stack up in the P.O. and trickle out during the week as staffing permits.
Also, there is a small army of substitute carriers who work Saturdays and the regular carrier's vacation and sick days. Eliminating Saturday deliveries will cause most of them to seek other work. It's their only guaranteed work day.
This will cause tremendous problems in coverage down the road.
It's such a crazy proposal that I suspect it is just a negotiating ploy to get Congress to get off its fat ass and end the stupid health care pre-payments that are causing 90% of the losses.
You’re on it. In my office, Saturday is the second biggest, if not the biggest day of an average week. This week I did 10+ hours on Monday, and 9+ today. The rest of the week was lighter, but we just closed a “sortation” facility and sortating has been moved to another location, trucks ran differently etc. I can’t wait to add Saturday to Monday. We will have to leave stuff behind, so we can make it back before dispatch.
All that said, the USPS would GREATLY benefit from a business friendly Administration, and some economic growth. THAT is the real problem. With the USPS. Really, actually, for real, honest economic growth, would benefit everyone, and the USPS would be there working, and back to breaking even.
Cutting Saturday delivery is another hair-brained idea by someone way up in the food chain paid to come up with ideas. They propose to save $2 billion, but they also proposed to save a boatload of cash by putting in Flat Sequencing machinery to cut down the street time of letter carriers. How did that work out? Eh, they didn’t save enough to cover their costs. It’s losing money.
“or it will simply stack up on the P.O.”
That is an excellent point.
Speaking strictly from a business point of view...a Monday holiday delays mail for days. Three days of built up mail will be a nightmare and very disruptive to a business.
Before all of the tech savvy jump on me...a lot of business is still conducted in a traditional manner. Not every small or medium sized company can operate soley on the internet. A lot depends on what service is being delivered. That is not completely a bad thing. If the internet goes down, companies that are totally dependent are s.o.l.
I can personally get by with less delivery service from the USPS...my business not so much. As hard as this may be to believe...lots of folks don’t have computers for communication!