Postmaster General David Steiner has told members of Congress that the U.S. Postal Service could be forced to cut a day of mail delivery due to budget woes.
In written testimony to the House subcommittee on Government Operations, Mr. Steiner said that “from the historic peak volume of 213 billion pieces per year in 2006 to 109 billion pieces today, we have lost over 104 billion pieces per year … if all of that lost volume was paid at the current price of a stamp, which is 78 cents, that’s about 81 billion dollars.”
Mr. Steiner said the agency’s financial shortfall is exacerbated by anti-monopoly regulations, retirement and workers’ compensation benefits, restrictions on where U.S. Postal Service retirement funds can be invested, a hard $15 billion borrowing limit and the need to deliver to every address six days a week.
Currently, Mr. Steiner said, 71% of U.S. Postal Service delivery routes are “financially underwater” and 58% of post offices do not make enough money to cover their operating costs. He expects the U.S. Postal Service to run out of money within a year; the agency had net losses of $9 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Cutting the number of delivery days from six to five, Mr. Steiner said, would save between $2.9 billion and $3.5 billion each year.
As a current letter carrier, I can say that we absolutely should go to 5 day delivery. There just isn’t enough mail to justify the 6th day. Only parcels and express on Saturday with a skeleton crew.
Perfect!, Monday to Friday a Normal Life like Normal People, I agree 110% I am ready when we start?
Couldn’t agree more! When do we start?
If you get rid of Amazon Sundays you could save money there as well. Instead of running the trucks 7 days a week, and doing amazon packages on a Sunday and paying us for an extra day get rid of the Sundays. It would be nice to go to a 5 day work week but there are other ways to save money.
How about starting with all the waste at the top and numerous positions that no one knows what they do. Check out the top salaries of management, start there and then talk about cutting those of us who actually do the work. They keep cutting employees but not the waste. Really disappointed in Doge not getting that done. It’s ridiculous! One supervisor per seven employees would probably be a good place to look into as well. It’s a shame they don’t talk to the employees as we could shed a lot of light on truth. I do agree five day mail delivery M-F and parcels on Saturday and Sunday. As Fed Ex, Amazon and UPS do seven day package delivery. That’s where our money is coming from so we must stay competitive and flexible there. There are so many places to start instead of the actual people who do the job. We are short handed as it is and they want to make it worse. I watch Postmasters cut jobs to make themselves look good and for their bonuses and then leave for another office after they destroy the one they are in. You can see the PMG is no different. He’s not going to do what needs to be done. You see that he doesn’t once talk about the top, useless waste just us pheasants at the bottom. Until they address that problem it will never change. Check out the top 100 management positions and their salaries, it’s publicly available and then discuss the employees.
Cutting the waste from the top is exactly where to start. Audit the spending of executives that spend hundreds to thousands of dollars on meetings… snacks, meals, unnecessary items. They can drink the coffee at the office that everyone else drinks or stop at Starbucks on your way to the office. Not ship it from your office to the other on postal dime. I get providing items for meetings but let’s stop being ridiculous.
5 day delivery is one option as it eliminates 16% of the employees needed to deliver the mail plus the cost of operating the facilities. A second option would be every other day delivery Monday through Saturday. Each carrier would have 2 routes one delivered M-W-F the other T-T-S. This option reduces the carrier work force by 50%. Since salaries make up the majority of the USPS budget this would make for a tremendous savings. I’m a retired EAS-22 Postmaster with 42 years service.
You can always force the people that are at the retirement age to retire as well. That would save some money. There’s a lot of people that are working past their retirement dates i mean, there’s people that are here for 50/60 years that could probably need toretire. And that would help with the budget. Wouldn’t it?