PMG Potter Lauds New Legislation That Will Eliminate Saturday Delivery

Postal Service Hears From Businesses on 5-Day Delivery Week
June 23, 2010 From Chicago Tribune
What do CVS Caremark Corp. and a northwest Michigan newspaper have in common? They both rely heavily on Saturday mail delivery. So when the Postal Regulatory Commission held a hearing Monday at City Hall, they came out to speak against the U.S. Postal Service's plan to eliminate Saturday delivery, which would save $3 billion annually. Under the plan, letter carriers would not deliver mail or pick up letters from blue collection boxes on Saturdays. Mail would be accepted at post offices on Saturdays, but it wouldn't be processed until after the weekend. Express mail and remittance mail services would continue seven days a week. The plan comes as the Postal Service is faced with a projected $238 billion deficit over the next decade.

Postmaster General Potter Outlines Dire Strait of USPS
May 11, 2010 From The Washington Post
The man who wants to end Saturday mail delivery is pressed for time. The way Postmaster General John E. Potter sees it, he has less than six months to convince Congress and the nation of the urgent need to retool the U.S. Postal Service for the 21st century. By fall, the Postal Service won't have enough money to make payroll, Potter predicts. But big customers, regulators, lawmakers and organized labor still have to be won over. Which might help explain Potter's stark assessment. He wants Congress to roll back a law requiring the Postal Service to prepay retiree health benefits. But he also wants the flexibility to change the business model -- by dropping Saturday deliveries, replacing post offices with outposts in suburban supermarkets and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs through attrition.