I do not support eliminating Saturday as a day of delivery except as a last resort.  I do support the Postmaster General (PMG) in his efforts to cut operational costs.  He runs a tight ship operationally given all of their oversight constraints.  USPS has polled their "customers" who are described as recipients of mail.  About 80% do not object to eliminating Saturday, but I think their real customers are the mailers who pay the postage.  Folks who receive mail (free in their mailbox) are actually customers of the mailers, not the USPS.  If the USPS has polled mailers, especially those engaged in marketing mail, I have not seen those results published.

When this idea was rolled out three years ago, the Postal Service said they would eventually save $3.1 billion annually.  Shortly thereafter the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) did their own analysis concluding annual savings of $1.7 billion going to 5-day delivery.  That was a $1.4 billion difference of opinion.  The PRC report cited the Postal Service's over-estimate of cost-savings and under-estimate of potential mail volume loss due to losing a day of delivery.  Now the Postal Service promotes this as a $2 billion savings.  That is the troubling part of this.  Do they know with certainty that mailers will participate at the same volume levels with 5-day delivery?  Eliminating Saturday adds 20% more mail competing in the mailbox for the remaining 5 days.  How does that affect my decision to mail if I am a marketer?

There is too much we don't know about the consequences of this decision to fully support it right now.  I would err on the side of not giving mailers any overt reason to stop mailing.  Maybe this is a ploy to get Congress off the dime and do something about retiree health benefit pre-funding and pension over-payments.  If this announcement did not get their attention, nothing will.  The best solution is for Congress to do their job and enact Postal Reform legislation.  In the meantime, the PMG should continue his aggressive cost-cutting, but leave 6-day delivery intact for now.