The United States Postal Service will no longer deliver mail on Saturdays to cut costs by $2 million annually. The Postal Service will continue to deliver packages six days a week.
“[The USPS] simply doesn’t have the cash to run a six-day mail delivery schedule,” said Tad Kelley, a spokesman for western Pennsylvania district for The United States Postal Service.
The scheduled cutback, which does not change the total volume of mail delivery, will go into effect in August.
Mail will still be delivered to P.O. Box addresses, and offices that are currently open on Saturdays will remain open after the new plan is implemented.
Kelley also said the decision has been made after five years of dialogue and surveys around the nation that showed that Americans do not use the Postal Service as they did in the past.
Mail delivery has seen a 25 percent drop since 2006 compared to an increase of 14 percent in package delivery, Kelley said.
The five-day delivery schedule will not affect the background operations of the postal service because they will continue to run mail transportation and processing at their centers, Kelley said.
Lori Kello, staff assistant at Findlay Commons Desk, said the staff was not sure how the new schedule would affect the on-campus mail delivery for Penn State.
“We will need to wait for more information or see when the changes are made to find out how it will affect the on-campus mail,” Kello said.
The campus mail service that delivers mail between Penn State departments and campuses will not be affected since they operate on a five-day week, Group Leader of Mail Services at Penn State Paul Fetzer said.
Along with declining mail delivery, the U.S. Postal Service has been struggling financially due to increasing costs for mandatory expenses to cover future medical costs for the organization’s retirees.
The Postal Service is the only government agency that is required to cover these medical expenses that constituted $11.1 billion of losses in 2012.
Kelly also said the changes in the delivery schedule would affect 35,000 positions nationwide. The Postal Service cut about 200,000 positions in the last decade and provides assistance for outgoing employees to make a transition, Kelly said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
