Potter Teases Five-Day Postal Delivery Plan to Senate

The U.S. Postal Service would continue to accept and drop-shipped bulk mail as well as deliver and receive express mail seven days a week, despite its forthcoming plan to stop Saturday delivery.

Testifying before the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government last week, Potter gave an overview of what the USPS plans to propose later this month to the Postal Regulatory Commission.

The USPS said cutting Saturday delivery could save it as much as $3 billion a year at a time when its revenue and mail volume are continuing to decline. For more details, click here http://directmag.com/postal/usps-delivery-cut-rate-hike-0303/index.html

Under its plan, the USPS would also:

*Discontinue residential and business mail delivery collections on Saturday.

*Discontinue collecting mail from blue collection boxes on Saturdays except for dedicated express mail collection boxes.

On the other hand, the USPS would:

*Keep post offices that are usually open on Saturdays open.

*Continue delivering mail to post office boxes on Saturday.

*Continue allowing bill payments addressed to post office boxes seven days per week.

The postal service plans to submit a detailed plan later this month to the PRC which will then offer an advisory opinion about this to Congress which must decide if the USPS can cut Saturday delivery.

PRC Chairman Ruth Goldway, who also testified before the subcommittee, said this could take as long as nine months.

“The PRC study of this is really kind of a preliminary round that will provide more information about the issue that Congress will probably look at as one of the things they look at as to whether or not they think this ought to happen,” Tony Conway, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, told Direct Newsline.

Conway noted this is not likely to happen until 2011 at the earliest.