Cut to Saturday Letter Delivery Called Necessary for Ailing Postal Service

U.S.P.S. facing $16 billion in losses

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By Lauren Maxwell
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Story Created: Feb 6, 2013 at 3:46 PM AKDT

Story Updated: Feb 6, 2013 at 7:14 PM AKDT

ANCHORAGE - A big announcement from the U.S. Postal Service today: Starting August 5, there will be no more Saturday mail delivery to your door. It’s a bid to save money, and the Postal Service needs to save a lot of it. Last year its losses were reported at almost $16 billion.

“Saturdays are actually a week day that we receive a low volume of mail,” said postal spokeswoman Blessie Lochmann. “That’s why Saturday was selected.”

The exception will be packages, which will still be delivered to the door. Customers can also go to post offices that have Saturday hours and do business there. Those who have postal boxes will have mail placed in their boxes on Saturday. The customers most affected will be people used to seeing the familiar face of their letter carrier on their street, but those KTVA spoke to seemed to understand.

“In some ways I’m sympathetic,” said one woman. “The cost of the post office is tremendous, they need to cut.”

“I think they know their business better than we do,” said a man. “If it turns out they can do that without cutting back on things too much, then I think it’s probably a good thing to do.”

Still, some carriers say they will miss their Saturday route, including mailman Charles Cooper.

“I like being around the customers on Saturdays,” said Cooper. “Because they are all off on Saturdays so I get to see a lot of people that I normally don’t get to see during the week.”

The move is expected to save about $2 billion a year. The Postal Service says it hopes to make the change without any layoffs and that most of the savings will come from eliminating overtime.

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