Regarding 5 Day Delivery Here’s What USPS Has to Say…

Why is five-day delivery needed?

The Postal Service is facing unprecedented volume declines and a projected $238 billion shortfall during the next decade. To ensure that America continues to have a viable Postal Service, the Postmaster General has introduced a comprehensive plan including cost cutting, increased productivity and seven legislative and regulatory changes that form the necessary foundation for a leaner, more flexible Postal Service

Five-day delivery is one of the fundamental changes that will help USPS compete more effectively in the marketplace and better respond to changing customer needs.

How will five-day delivery work?

Simply put, our five-day delivery plan calls for five days of delivery to street addresses and six days of service at Post Offices and P.O. Boxes.

Under five-day delivery, there will no longer be delivery of mail to street addresses — residences or businesses — on Saturday. Post Offices will remain open on Saturdays, continuing to provide normal customer services, including the sale of stamps and other postal products. Mail addressed to P.O. Boxes will continue to be available Saturday.

What will change?

• There will be no regular Saturday mail delivery to street addresses.
• Priority Mail for street addresses will be delivered Monday through Friday.
• There will be no scheduled collection of mail from blue collection boxes or retail offices on Saturday. Mail accepted across a retail counter will be processed on Monday.
• Street-addressed local firm holdout mail will be available for pickup Monday through Friday, but not Saturday.

What will stay the same?

• Express Mail will be delivered seven days a week, 365 days a year. Express Mail will be collected from dedicated Express Mail boxes on Saturday. Express Mail will continue to be processed on the day it is accepted, including Saturday and Sunday.
• Post Offices will remain open on Saturday. No Post Office will be closed as a result of the change to five-day delivery.
• P.O. Box-addressed mail will be delivered Saturday.
• Remittance mail addressed to P.O. boxes will be available for pickup seven days a week.
• Mailers can still drop-ship enter destinating or incoming mail at plants and delivery units.
• Service standard rules will remain the same.

When will five-day delivery happen?

The Postal Service must file a request for a non-binding advisory opinion from the Postal Regulatory Commission. If Congress does not enact legislation barring it from doing so, the Postal Service plans to implement five-day delivery in fiscal year 2011 (Oct. 1, 2010, to Sept. 30, 2011). More information on when five-day delivery will be implemented will be provided well in advance of the start of five-day delivery.

PEN Editor:  USPS also states…

Five-day delivery is part of the solution to declining revenue, volumes

The United States Postal Service is facing unprecedented volume declines and a projected $238 billion shortfall during the next decade. To ensure that America continues to have a viable Postal Service, the Postmaster General has introduced a comprehensive plan including cost cutting, increased productivity and certain legislative and regulatory changes that will form the necessary foundation for a leaner, more flexible Postal Service.

Five-day delivery is one of the fundamental changes that will help the Postal Service better respond to changing customer needs.

Profound technological and social changes have altered the way Americans communicate. For many, electronic media have replaced the letter as the primary means of social and business communication. Revenue from First-Class Mail – the Postal Service’s longtime bread-and-butter product — continues to decline as the use of electronic message delivery increases.

Electronic diversion and the recession are significant contributors to a continuing decline in mail volume, which in fiscal year 2009 plummeted by 25.6 billion pieces — nearly 13 percent of total volume — resulting in a Postal Service revenue drop of nearly $7 billion. The trends underlying these declines will only continue.

Current global economic conditions have put the largest users of the mail under severe financial stress. In the past, they spent millions of dollars on mailings and now many have drastically cut back on their use of mail.

Five days of delivery, six days of service

While several steps must be taken to fully address the revenue gap, five-day delivery is one of the Postal Service’s best options to significantly reduce its costs to partially offset its unprecedented mail volume and revenue declines, with Saturday being the best day to eliminate carrier delivery.

Why Saturday? It has the week’s lowest daily volume, and more than a third of U.S. businesses are closed Saturday. Most businesses and households surveyed in a national Gallup Poll indicated Saturday would be the least disruptive day to eliminate mail delivery. That conclusion has since been reinforced by recent Postal Service market research.

This website is designed to provide postal customers with information regarding our proposal to implement a five-day delivery schedule for street addresses. We hope you find the site informative as the Postal Service strives to continue to be as dynamic and adaptive as the marketplace and customers it serves.

Implementation of a five-day delivery schedule by the Postal Service after fiscal year 2010 (which ends Sept. 30, 2010) is contingent upon Congress not enacting legislation to prevent such a change in service. In addition, the Postal Service must request that the Postal Regulatory Commission review its plans and issue a non-binding advisory opinion. The Postal Service is sharing information about its plans for implementing five-day delivery to help household and business customers. If the Postal Service is permitted by Congress to implement five-day delivery, it would take effect in fiscal year 2011 (Oct. 1, 2010, to Sept. 30, 2011) and with advance notice to be provided before it would start. This site contains basic facts about the status of Postal Service planning, guides for customers and general information about a potential five-day delivery schedule.

Source: USPS

Also see: 5 Day Delivery

  5 Day Delivery