According to a recent assessment of the reasons for the huge and continually growing deficit of the U.S. Postal Service, the problem can be summed up in a few sentences.
– Mail volume is decreasing each year.
– Sixty percent (60 percent) of Post Office costs are delivery related.
– Number of locations requiring servicing is increasing each year.
– Cost of delivery is unrelated to number of pieces delivered on each visit.
How about three day a week delivery? This would automatically double the number of pieces delivered on each visit. This would put us back to “square one,” a return to high volume pieces delivered per visit and thus virtually halving the cost of delivery.
Would this really adversely affect anyone? Perhaps some few persons in a very minor way. On the average your mail would arrive only one-half day later than at present. That is one-half of your mail no later than now and the other half of your mail a day later than now. (Incidentally George Washington’s servant had to ride horseback 30 miles round trip once a week from Mount Vernon to Alexandria and back to pick up his mail).
So what are the negatives?
Is there anything you now receive via the Postal Service that an insignificant delay would be detrimental? I doubt it but just to cover all bases, since some people still do not have access to emails, have the Postal Service re-instate special delivery albeit at a fairly stiff price.
I am unable to think of any flaw in this proposal. It seems so logical that I am mystified as to why it has not been seriously considered. I realize that our Congress must approve such a move. But why hasn’t this even been discussed? What is so sacred about six-day delivery?
The world is changing rapidly. E-mails, bill paying, online banking, online shopping, Facebook, twitter are the new system supplanting most Postal services.
To a great extent postal delivery now consists mainly of catalogues. These certainly aren’t one day time sensitive.
Theodore Theodorsen
