Postal carriers collect signatures to save 6-day delivery

Postal carriers are fighting an effort to eliminate Saturday mail delivery. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

BLOOMINGTON – The U.S. Postal Service made a special delivery this week.

Letter carriers delivered 500,000 signatures to Washington as a show of support to Congress for keeping six-day delivery. Eliminating Saturday service is one idea that’s been floated as a way to save the cash-strapped postal service.

Tim Brucker, Bloomington-Normal president for the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the move to five-day delivery would dramatically reduce the postal service’s workforce.

“We’re set up for six-day delivery, so I imaging every sixth carrier would be without a job,” Brucker said.

He said it’s a myth that people don’t use the postal service anymore. He says much of the mail delivered now is at a bulk rate, where the postal services’ profit margin is much smaller.

He says dropping Saturday delivery would also have the unintended consequence of delaying the delivery of medications and other time-sensitive items that private companies such as Fedex and UPS hand off to the postal service.

“It’s not profitable for those agencies to go in and do actual door-to-door delivery in every single neighborhood,” Brucker said.

Brucker says letter carriers in Bloomington-Normal collected about 450 signatures. Each letter carrier was asked to collect at least 10 signatures.

The U.S. Postal Service lost $5 billion last year.

Eric Stock can be reached at eric@wjbc.com.