The Enid News and Eagle, Enid, OK

Opinion

Discussion

April 6, 2010

Dropping Saturday delivery may only make U.S. Postal Service’s problems worse

Enid News and Eagle

A proposal by the U.S. Postal Service to drop regular Saturday mail delivery is the wrong answer to a nagging question.

Clearly the Postal Service faces a financial dilemma. The popularity of e-mail, texting, instant messaging and other Internet-based forms of communication have taken away a big chunk of the Postal Service’s customers. Plus, delivering mail is very labor-intensive work, and the U.S. Postal Service is challenged by high labor costs, including the cost of retirement programs for former postal workers.

But addressing the question of high costs with the answer of dropping another day of weekend delivery is short-sighted. It threatens to speed up the trend of Postal Service customers fleeing to alternate delivery methods.

Daily universal service is the unique strength of the U.S. Postal Service. In almost any location in the United States, the Postal Service delivers mail six days a week. That promise of six-day delivery virtually anywhere is a service not provided by many other delivery services, or at least not provided for anything close to the low cost of a stamp.

When the Postal Service talks about eliminating Saturday delivery, it risks losing that unique strength. The USPS delivers a lot of mail on Saturdays. For daily newspapers, and a lot of other businesses, that’s an important business day. In fact, Saturday is a busier day for volume of mail handled than other days of the week.

Because the Postal Service does not deliver standard mail on Sundays, a longstanding and commonly accepted practice, dropping Saturday delivery would leave a two-day gap. Add in one of the numerous Monday federal holidays and you’d have a wholly unacceptable three-day lapse in delivery.

Daily newspaper readers don’t want to read about Friday night high school sports on Monday afternoon or Tuesday afternoon. Mailers other than newspapers also would find the extra delays unacceptable. For daily newspapers and some others mailers, losing Saturday delivery would leave them scrambling to find alternate ways to communicate. The Postal Service undoubtedly will lose customers. That, in turn, would just make the Postal Service’s financial situation worse.

The USPS will keep making adjustments in postage rates, but as long as those increases are small and the rates remain much lower than those of alternative delivery services, the Postal Service won’t see a massive exodus in mailers. Drop Saturday service, and the problems will be much more drastic.

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