According to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, 7 out of 10 Americans agree that the Postal Service should stop Saturday mail delivery in order to cut the Post Office's huge budget deficit. Just one problem, General: The savings won't be nearly enough.
he U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to deliver packages six days a week under a plan aimed at saving about $2 billion annually, the financially struggling agency says. The change will begin in August.
As Hurricane Sandy began tearing up the East Coast, thousands evacuated their homes, schools closed, and millions of businesses and government offices told their workers to stay home. But a few employers did not: the Supreme Court, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Home Depot, Lowe's, and the U.S. Postal Service.
The U.S. Postal Service, on the brink of default on a second multibillion-dollar payment it can't afford to pay, is sounding a new cautionary note that having squeezed out all the cost savings within its power, the mail agency's viability now lies almost entirely with Congress.
For years now, the United States Postal Service has been the poster boy for government waste, but that organization may now be getting a run from another favorite target of government inefficiency: Amtrak.
If you ask the postmaster general, saving the Post Office will require shutting down one out of three post offices, laying off tens of thousands of postal workers, and ending Saturday mail delivery. Trouble is, he's wrong.
In a last-ditch effort to save itself from bankruptcy, the Postal Service is forging ahead with plans to close half of its 500 mail processing centers and roughly 3,700 of its post offices. The result: Deliveries will take longer.
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service said Monday it is seeking to move quickly to close 252 mail processing centers and slow first-class delivery next spring, citing steadily declining mail volume. The cuts are part of $3 billion in reductions aimed at helping the agency avert bankruptcy next year.
It'll cost a penny more to mail a letter next year. The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service announced Tuesday that it will increase postage rates on Jan. 22, including a one-cent increase in the cost of first-class mail, to 45 cents.
On Tuesday, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe went before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to plead for a government bailout. USPS is losing $9.2 billion a year and is currently on track to lose $20 billion annually by 2015. How can it be saved?
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warned that the Postal Service is on "the brink of default" as he battles to keep his agency solvent. Without legislation by Sept. 30, the agency "will default on a mandated $5.5 billion payment to the Treasury," Donahoe told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday.
In DailyFinance's new video series, My Three Cents, personal finance columnist Regina Lewis discusses tips and trends affecting today's consumer market. This week's focus: continuing trouble at the U.S. Postal Service.
The U.S. Postal Service warned that it will miss federal payments totaling an estimated $6.8 billion by October, unless the government steps in.
The U.S. Postal Service's annual loss more than doubled in fiscal 2010 compared to a year earlier as mail volume continues to slide while interest costs related to workers' compensation climb.
IBISWorld Research has identified four unfortunate industries that will likely be mired in recession-like conditions over the next three years. It's not a good time to be hog farmer or a postmaster.
The U.S. Postal Service's attempt to raise the price of a first-class stamp to 46 cents from 44 cents was unanimously rejected today by an oversight board, which said the Postal Service failed to sufficiently quantify either the effect of the recession on operations or how much mail shipments would decline if rates were increased.
The U.S Postal Service reported a $3.5 billion third quarter loss due to continued declines in mail volume and increased costs from retiree health benefits. Without help from Congress and a postage rate increase, it could run out of cash in 2011.
"This proposal has a lot of doubters," says Ruth Goldway, chairman of the Postal Regulatory Commission, which must issue an advisory opinion on the USPS's plan to cut service. "I'm skeptical." Congress may not go along, either.
Faced with an estimated $7 billion shortfall in 2010, the United States Postal Service is contemplating radical cuts that would eliminate Saturday mail delivery and raise the cost of postage. But to really turn the USPS's problems around, it will either need to be directly funded by the government or it needs the freedom to set its own prices, policies, and hours.
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