You’ll still have to check the mailbox six days a week for the foreseeable future.
I sat down yesterday with Dan Blair, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, to talk about the Postal Service’s request to switch to 5-day delivery. Blair said it would be “months, at the quickest” before the change could be implemented. Congress would have to approve it; the PRC would have to review it; the Postal Service would have to work out logistics.
We’re looking at well into fiscal 2010, if not 2011, but it’s really hard to speculate.
There’s also some debate over how much the switch to 5-day delivery would impact mail volume, and how much money it would save. The PRC estimates 5-day delivery means a 2% drop in mail volume — though he stressed that was just an estimate.
As for savings: The Postal Service’s internal numbers say about $3 billion in annual savings; the PRC estimates closer to $2 billion.
We’ll have more from the interview — and a longer story about the Postal Service’s finances — in Monday’s Federal Times.
