Is Mail Service Necessary Six Days a Week?

 Not so long ago, time would be spent together as a family on Sundays. There were no stores open, so plans would be made to make purchases on the other days of the week.  No one was bothered by this, and actually enjoyed their day of rest and time with their families. Why all the fuss about reducing mail delivery to five days?  A person would just have to plan out what they needed mailed and do it on one of the five days there was mail pick up.  If it simply could not wait, they could drive it to the post office themselves on Saturday, since the post office branch locations would still be open.  It would be nice for the mailbox to be quiet for a couple days wouldn’t it?

The postal service regards cutting mail service for one day as a money saving strategy, the employees look upon it as losing possible jobs. Businesses view it as an inconvenience and may look to other delivery services to satisfy their needs.  Are there alternatives to this? Sure, there is an alternative to everything if one looks hard enough.

Some solutions may be found in looking at the infrastructure of the Postal Service. They do not own the majority of their buildings; they lease them but are still responsible for maintenance.  Several of the buildings are aged and in need repair.  If they consolidated, and perhaps bought some of the vacant buildings that can be had for a good price, they could not only occupy it rent free, they could perhaps lease some of the building out and bring in revenue that way. There are also a number of very small satellite offices that could probably be closed without affecting a community at large. They do not own an air fleet, but instead utilize various other delivery services to get their packages delivered to the Postal Service that they in turn, need to deliver.   Wouldn’t it be cost effective to get the packages themselves? How many times have we seen a postal worker out having lunch for an hour or two or even three? We begin to wonder why they have it so easy. Perhaps if they were monitored more closely or the postal service could cull the lackadaisical employees and keep the good ones, versus culling by seniority status, it would result in effective, productive workers.