The Postal Service experienced an unprecedented decline of 25.6 billion mailpieces in FY 2009. As a result, there is excess processing capacity at the majority of its plants, so there will be minimal disruption from the shift of residential volumes from Saturday to Sunday night/Monday morning.
Eliminating Saturday delivery and the need to cancel stamped mail collected on Saturday will reduce mail processing work hours. The majority of the work hours savings come from the elimination of work used to support the processing of the mail, such as setting up the empty equipment to receive mail, labeling of equipment and the movement of mail from one operation to another. Similarly, supervisors who monitor outgoing operations on Saturday will not be needed if those operations are not functioning that day, saving additional work hours.
These work-hour savings translate to about 1,500 full-time-equivalent employees.
With five-day delivery, all P.O. Box-addressed mail, including Caller Service and national firm holdout mail, all of which may contain remittance mail, will continue to be processed for Saturday delivery. Remittance mail addressed to a P.O. Box address will continue to be available for pickup at plants by remittance processors seven days a week.
In order to provide Post Offices with P.O. Box mail for Saturday delivery, software that is used to sort the mail will need to be modified. P.O. Box mail may require additional delivery point sequencing run-time. Flats will be processed and delivered to Post Offices in time to make scheduled Saturday P.O. Box availability times. All parcels, including Priority Mail, will be sorted to five-digit ZIP Codes and will be available at P.O. Boxes.
The Business Mail Entry Units (BMEU) will continue to accept mail over the weekend though operational hours may change. For some mail acceptance, the start-the-clock event may be changed.
