Your Comments Requested

Greetings:

I had submitted the previous proposal last year in an attempt to reduce the operating expenses of the USPS. The anticipated savings are generalized in the proposal. But, here are some specifics from the USPS web site regarding fuel costs:

• We operate the largest civilian vehicle fleet in the world with more than 216,000 vehicles driving more than 1.2 billion miles each year and using nearly 121 million gallons of fuel.
• When fuel costs increase one penny, our costs increase $8 million.

You can see that an approximate 40% reduction of this fuel consumption is very significant which could be doable implementing this proposal.

As expected, the proposal was turned down citing Federal Law. But, the law can be changed and that is the purpose of this proposal -- to see if there is sufficient grassroot support for this effort.

Thanks for your time, comments and ideas.

USPS Response 2/22/2006

Thank you for your business concept proposal regarding Every-Other-Day Delivery. We appreciate the opportunity to learn about this initiative, and your interest in sharing ideas that could potentially help the Postal Service better serve the nation and its customers.
After carefully reviewing the proposal, we have decided not to pursue this opportunity. The suggestion to eliminate one or more days of mail delivery has been reviewed extensively by both the Postal Service and Congress. However, public law prohibits the Postal Service from taking any action to reduce or to plan to reduce the number of days each week for regular mail delivery. This is a legal constraint and binding on the Postal Service.
Once again, thank you for your interest in doing business with the Postal Service.
Sincerely,
Business Initiatives Manager

Original Proposal to USPS 2/8/2006

I would like to propose that the United States Postal Service (USPS) change their delivery schedule to every other day, rather than every day. Here is my rationale:

• Most people do not require everyday delivery. USPS can offer a special service at a separate cost to those that do (e.g. people who operate a home business), or have them get a post office box.
• Each mail carrier would have two routes instead of the one they currently have. Route A would be delivered on Mon, Wed, and Fri; Route B would be Tue, Thu, and Sat. This would eliminate at least 40% of the USPS mail carriers today and reduce the USPS labor expenses greatly, thus diminishing the need for periodic postal rate increases and exorbitant retirement costs.
• If the USPS is concerned as to where you would store ½ the mail volume each day instead of delivering everything as you do now, I suggest they utilize the same process today that they use when they give your workers a holiday off (e.g. 4th of July), or especially one that falls on a Monday (USPS did not deliver any mail on the day before which is Sun, and the holiday, Mon), yet everything was fine. They should put the mail that they would not be delivering that alternate day in the same place for delivery on the next day.
• Reduce gas consumption of all of the USPS customer delivery vehicles by half. This is good for the environment, and reduces our dependence upon oil. I can only imagine what the USPS daily gas bill is.
• Reduce the number of customer delivery vehicles needed by half. Look how much that would save.
• Alternatives such as email (this email to the USPS is a great example), electronic bill pay, direct access to checking accounts by suppliers, are readily available and do not require any paper to deliver or dispose of afterwards.
• Much of what the USPS delivers is junk mail anyway which many people do not want, requiring them to dispose of this junk in unnecessary recycling processes, or filling up landfills. Why do people get upset when they get unsolicited telephone calls, or spam emails or unwanted calls on their cell phones? Why do we have laws preventing these types of actions? The answer is because an outside firm has wasted their time or resources, yet the USPS feels that they have the right to generate revenue even though their customers are the ones wasting customer resources and time to enable USPS to generate revenue.