Unprecedented cuts by the cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service will slow first-class delivery next spring and, for the first time in 40 years, eliminate the chance for stamped letters to arrive the next day.
The estimated $3 billion in reductions, to be announced in broader detail later Monday, are part of a wide-ranging effort by the Postal Service to quickly trim costs and avert bankruptcy. They could slow everything from check payments to Netflix’s DVDs-by-mail, add costs to mail-order prescription drugs, and threaten the existence of newspapers and time-sensitive magazines delivered by postal carrier to far-flung suburban and rural communities.
That birthday card mailed first-class to Mom also could arrive a day or two late, if people don’t plan ahead.
“It’s a potentially major change, but I don’t think consumers are focused on it and it won’t register until the service goes away,” said Jim Corridore, analyst with S&P Capital IQ, who tracks the shipping industry. “Over time, to the extent the customer service experience gets worse, it will only increase the shift away from mail to alternatives. There’s almost nothing you can’t do online that you can do by mail.”
The cuts would close roughly 250 of the nearly 500 mail processing centers across the country as early as next March. Because the consolidations would typically lengthen the distance mail travels from post office to processing center, the agency would also lower delivery standards for first-class mail that have been in place since 1971. Currently, first-class mail is supposed to be delivered to homes and businesses within the continental U.S. in one to three days; that will be lengthened to two to three days, meaning mailers could no longer expect next-day delivery in surrounding communities. Periodicals could take between two and nine days.
The Postal Service already has announced a 1-cent increase in first-class mail to 45 cents beginning Jan. 22.
About 42 percent of first-class mail is now delivered the following day; another 27 percent arrives in two days, about 31 percent in three days and less than 1 percent in four to five days. Following the change next spring, about 51 percent of all first-class mail is expected to arrive in two days, with most of the remainder delivered in three days.
via Cuts to first-class mail to slow delivery in 2012 – BusinessWeek.
When I was in graduate school, I used to work for a professor who was editing the unpublished manuscripts of Walt Whitman. That included some of his correspondence. We were finding that letters from New York City to Whitman’s home in Washington, D.C., were arriving the next day! In 1862! During the tumult of the Civil War!
Yes, electronic communication is making snail mail obsolete. But it is still necessary to transport “things,” including everything we order online. Private companies like UPS and Fed-Ex are taking up the slack. Presumably even the post office will still offer overnight delivery with Express Mail, for $30+ or whatever it costs. One would think that technology could also offer ways to speed up mail delivery and at a lower cost. At any rate, this is where we are. So remember to mail your bills and your greeting cards that much earlier.
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