Washington—The U.S. Postal Service says it will no longer look into the possibility of eliminating Saturday delivery. “After hearing preliminary findings of a study examining five-day delivery,” Robert Rider, chairman of the USPS Board of Governors (BOG), said in a statement, “the USPS will continue with existing six-day delivery.” The BOG on April 3 had ordered postal management to study cost savings associated with reducing delivery service to five days.
While the elimination of Saturday delivery is a dead issue, USPS management is still looking at the feasibility of consolidating facilities to cut costs. The agency plans to conclude its study by the fall. Even if it does consolidate any facilities, Direct Marketing Association postal reform consultant Ed Gleiman, a former chairman of the Postal Rate Commission, says that the agency would still need to explore other cost-containment methods as well as “the only way” to help ward off future postal rate increases.
The Postal Service, which could lose more than $1.5 billion for the fiscal year ending in September, is putting another rate case together. Having implemented its second rate case of the year on July 1, the agency could raise rates again as soon as fall 2002.