During the past year, the U.S. Postal Service made operational challenges that cause some letters to be delivered on Saturday even though they don't have to be delivered until the following week.
“When feasible, based on local operating conditions, the Postal Service advances Standard Mail [letters] scheduled for Monday and Tuesday delivery into a processing window that enables delivery on Saturday, which is generally the lightest delivery day of the week,” the USPS told the Postal Regulatory Commission yesterday (PDF, page 5).
“This practice balances the processing and delivery workload for Monday, which is generally the heaviest delivery day of the week.” Postal officials were responding to a question about how they managed to improve on-time delivery for Standard Mail during FY2016.
Last year, the Postal Service delivered more than 55 billion Standard letters, which generally are mass solicitations sent by businesses and other organizations. (The growing category is often called junk mail --but not by the Postal Service.) Standard letters have lower postage rates than do First Class letters, partly because First Class enjoys more expedited delivery.
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I started to do this 10 years ago when they made us work by ourselves on the machines. It lowered my Monday dps volume by at least 40k pieces.
ReplyDeleteThe woman in the picture seems happy to be receiving her junk mail on Saturday
ReplyDeleteThis is probably why Tuesday is usually very light.
ReplyDeleteSaturday has not been the lightest volume day in years, it has been up there with Friday as the second-heaviest. Tuesday is, by far, the lightest average letter volume. The worst, of course, is the Tuesday after a Monday holiday. If Mondays are the heaviest now, what will it be like if Saturday delivery is eliminated? And the Monday holiday would create a nightmare scenario on those following Tuesdays. This excludes any discussion of the exploding package volume....
ReplyDeleteSaturday is the heaviest day of the week because management piles all the mail hoping that carriers will run their routes to be off early for the weekend. The lowest DPS day in NE Indiana is Wednesday by a mile. I just wish they would get rid of Saturday delivery and make the other days equal on mail distribution. It would be nice to be with my family on Saturdays and believe it or not, over 70% of the customers leave their mail in the box over the weekend.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion Tuesday is junk mail day and Wednesday is the lightest
ReplyDeleteI agree. At least in 98387
Deleteletters now "delivered on Saturday even though they don't HAVE to be delivered until the following week" is in reference to Service Standard. It was in recent years that the USPS lengthened their Service Standard for SCF entered mail which granted them more time before they "had to deliver" the mail. So now when they are able to deliver before Service Standard (meaning they hit their previous defined delivery target)they want a pat on the back? Maybe if they were CONSISTENTLY able to meet or beat Service Standard year round and nationwide they would deserve some accolades.
ReplyDeleteWhat we see is management no longer scheduling manpower to work the mail but rather scheduling the mail to fit the manpower. More often or not a heavy DPS day is caused because mail has been rolled to the next delivery day or more to make sure we are done on the DCBS's by the arbitrary time set by management which is 5:00am ( a full two hours be for the city carriers report)
ReplyDeleteWith the new service standards we saw an immediate rolling of 1st class mail over standard. It seems that standard mail is tracked from the time the tree falls to make the paper which is why is is run on it's scheduled delivery day at the expense of single piece first class.