“There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

&#62; Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three.<p>... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

I saw the chairman of their board speak not long ago, and it turns out the biggest problem is that USPS can't fire any of their union employees, who consistently get awarded UPS salaries + 15-20% in arbitration.

The postal service derives a significant amount of its revenue from pitching direct mail to businesses as an effective way to reach customers (4)<p>This whole report from USPS (1) is worth reading but some notable excerpts:<p>"In 2009, 84 billion pieces of first-class mail and 83 billion pieces of direct mail were handled."<p>Invoices and bills constitute a large part of first-class mail (and they continue to move online, become paperless)<p>"One top marketing agency observed companies moving one-third of direct-mail acquisition spending online"<p>Imagine UPS/DHL/FedEx's profits if they went from deliver-on-demand to deliver-to-everywhere-regardless-of-demand:<p>"A key driver to the costs of delivering mail is the obligation to deliver to virtually every mail address, regardless of volume, 6 days a week... These costs are largely fixed so they grow with the size of the network, which has been grown by an average of 1.4 million addresses every year"<p>"Wages and benefits account for 80 percent of operating costs." (And they are directly tied to the people infrastructure required to meet the obligation to deliver mail to virtually every mail address)<p>Obviously, you can't make it up on volume alone:<p>"A First-class stamp costs 44 cents, while other major posts charge an average of 78 cents."<p>(1) <a href="http://www.usps.com/strategicplanning/_pdf/Ensuring_Viable_USPS_paper.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.usps.com/strategicplanning/_pdf/Ensuring_Viable_U...</a><p>(2) <a href="http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/PiecesofMail1789to2009.htm" rel="nofollow">http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/PiecesofMail1789to2009.htm</a><p>(3) <a href="http://www.usps.com/householddiary/_pdf/USPS_HDS_FY08_FINAL_PUBLIC_web2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.usps.com/householddiary/_pdf/USPS_HDS_FY08_FINAL_...</a><p>(4)<a href="http://www.usps.com/directmail/resourcecenter/research.htm?from=directmailhome&#38;page=researchwhydirectmailworks" rel="nofollow">http://www.usps.com/directmail/resourcecenter/research.htm?f...</a><p><a href="http://www.google.com/#hl=en&#38;source=hp&#38;q=direct+mail+%2B+USPS+%2B+volume+%2B+billions&#38;aq=f&#38;aqi=&#38;aql=&#38;oq=&#38;gs_rfai=&#38;fp=bcdf8cbbf06dc4f" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/#hl=en&#38;source=hp&#38;q=direct+mail...</a>

Why Saturday? They should cut out a day in the middle of the week. This way, you'll have to wait up to two days longer for a given item. It's better to distribute that wait time.

The real loser here is netflix. 17% increase in delivery time and not a damn thing you can do about it. Ouch.

Why can't I get/pay for a USPS.com email address of my physical address?<p>123MainSt.MyCity.State.Zip@usps.com?<p>Anything that is emailed to this address must pay postage, but the message body or attachment can be printed, certified and delivered to my physical location?<p>Maybe this isn't the perfect idea, but if the USPS would just embrace technology and innovate a little, they could really increase their revenues.

Amazing stats in their footer:<p>With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $68 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 28th in the 2009 Fortune 500.

When I saw the title, I first thought it was another April Fool's joke. Like it currently takes six days on average to deliver something, but there is not enough mail anymore to keep that up, so they're forced to deliver it in five days...<p>OK, so I didn't have my coffee yet... =)

Isn't their logic confusing latency and throughput?<p>Not enough mail to deliver suggests less mail volume, so less need for throughput, therefore we can hire fewer postal workers per post office.<p>Cutting out one day of deliveries reduces throughput and increases latency. For example, Netflix becomes a worse deal. A power user could once cycle 2 roundtrips of DVDs in one week and is now down to 1.5.

&#62; <i>The five-day delivery proposal is part of comprehensive plan announced March 2, “Delivering the Future,”</i><p>Government program names just kill me sometimes.

This made me wonder whether it was a good deal to buy "forever" stamps:<p><a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2166475/fr/rss/" rel="nofollow">http://www.slate.com/id/2166475/fr/rss/</a>

This wouldn't be such an issue if the postal service operated like a business instead of an institution. Why not commercialize it more? Where are the Coke stamps and IBM Express Mail envelopes? Why isn't the mail truck wrapped with an American Idol promo? Seems like the USPS could be a huge advertising vehicle. Why is this sacred?

Hopefully UPS and FedEx will make up the difference by delivering on Sunday.<p>The only stuff I get in the mail these days is some envelope warning me that I will go to jail if I don't tell the government my phone number.

interestingly enough, for a while i lived in a place that didn't have mail on saturdays.<p>i now live in a place that delivers and picks up mail twice a day, including saturdays.<p>i don't notice any difference.

While I don't doubt volumes have fallen as a result of things like email, the US postal service also hasn't done itself any favors. You read anecdotes like this, and it's a wonder that volumes haven't plummeted even faster: <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/things-are-worse-at-the-post-office-than-i-thought/38356/" rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/04/things-a...</a>

Maybe if this went through I could have home USPS delivery. The town I live in apparently adds enough new addresses to add two routes a year, but they can't hire that quickly. So half the residents have to use a PO Box for their address, and stuff shipped to their physical address gets returned.<p>Even one a day a week home delivery would be better for me. Stuff is rarely time sensitive, and we don't make it to the PO Box that often anyway.

Privatize the system and outsource it to UPS/FedEX,etc. (I know easier said than done). If I ever need to send snail mail, I just send it via those guys.

Most of the important packages I receive from USPS don't come on Saturdays anyhow. If I'm like most people, the 6th day won't be missed.

Awesome. I never saw why the mail system should work longer than the normal working week anyway. Hopefully the UK will go the same way sometime soon. The threat of having mail turn up on a Saturday (that you might need to wait in for) isn't worth it.

<i>"It’s five days of delivery, six days of service and Express Mail seven days a week"</i><p><i>"It also will save more than $3 billion a year"</i><p>If both of those are true, the change is reasonable.

<i>"Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three."</i><p>It ain't linear, buddy.

Plus most of the mail (bills) get delivered digitally