" Sorry Jay spoke to a couple people from the post office last week. They will never drop sat service. Business are structured for 7 days a week and sat is considered a work day. Also it would mean laying off employees to work with a five day week. Yes the main depot is empty but on the streets we have hundreds of postal carriers. Restructing the system to go to 5 day would actually cost more and is not a long term answer. What if we discover that say Sonoma is the largest oil field int he world. Do we jump back to 6 days? "

" First of all Jay- Social Security checks are not and have not been delivered on Sat. USPS and SS take that into account when the schedule date of delivery falls on Saturdays. Most financial institutions are not open for them to process.
They will be delivered the Friday before.
Secondly- most Post Offices do in fact have morning counter service and those employees are crafted to receive the trucks, sort the mail for route carriers in addition to working the window service.
Many carriers - known as "relief" are the ones to work Sat. That is the only scheduled day they do work-a possible fill in for sick and vacations happen too. USPS pays an EMA to rural carriers, but does not provide the vehicle. gas prices went through the roof and the EMA remained the same till just last month.
If you really want to write up an article on this subject- I suggest you investigate further.
Start with why does USPS have trucks delivering mail from distribution centers on Sundays and Holidays- when there is NO scheduled employees to process, distribute or deliver? "

" Jay's problem is that he does not have any idea about the Postal Service. No, I repeat NO, taxpayer money is used to finance the Postal Service. He needs to check his facts before he comments. "

" Just to correct you--there is processing on weekends and all holidays. The only closures are the stations as well as Sunday delivery. The main plants are open 24/7 and any employees that work in the plants unless they have high senority have to work all weekend long as well as every holiday including xmas. The reason is due to the next day delivery. Naturally there is no Sunday delivery, but mail comes into the plants on Saturdays that needs to be processed because even more comes in on Sunday that needs to be processed for Monday delivery. Trust me any 2 day carryover or when there is a holiday it's very hard to process (at the proper dispatch time) all that mail in the walk sequence for the carrier versus a 1 day turn over. If they are to stop Saturday delivery sure there would be some savings but not as much as you think because come Monday they will need extra help or to pay overtime to deliver Fri/Sat/Sun's mail--let alone a Monday holiday would make it 4 days worth of mail. The heaviest mailing days are Friday's and Monday's. If they are to go to a 5 day delivery they need to cut out 1 weekday to truly save $. "

" I have a better suggestion...why not a ban on all junk mail? Think of all the paper that would be saved, carriers would have less to deliver. I wonder how much of our postal service is taken up by what the majority of us throw away without looking at. "