Postal Service Saturday Delivery

Maybe you heard?  In February, the US Postal Service (USPS) Postmaster General announced a plan to end Saturday delivery of first-class mail starting in August.  Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahue justified this plan because it would result in an annual savings of 2 billion dollars without requiring employee layoffs.  The USPS would also stay committed to maintaining parcel delivery on Saturdays.

In it's 2012 Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan (SSPP) the USPS calls itself a 'self-supporting agency that funds its operations from revenue generated by sales of products and services.'  This checks out since the annual revenue was about $70 billion, and the USPS received ~$100 million per year  (0.14% of annual budget) in the form of a 'reimbursement from Congress.'  You can see the declining numbers (e.g., revenue, mail volume, and career employees), increasing number (e.g., delivery points), and billions of dollars lost between 2007 and 2011 in the chart below (source: USPS 2012 SSPP). 

Faced with these figures, Triple E is surprised to hear that tradition and preservation of an 'American Icon' have taken precedence over common sense and good economics.  The Latest:  A short-term budget recently approved by Congress and the POTUS includes language requiring six days of delivery; therefore, the USPS has withdrawn plans to end Saturday delivery.  There is another component of the argument for ending Saturday delivery - Environmental Benefits - let's take a look.

Triple E Agent Assignment:
Discuss fuel consumption trends by USPS transportation fleet and potential benefits of ending Saturday first-class mail delivery...

Is USPS on track to meet sustainability performance metrics?

As shown in the Table above, annual transportation fuel use by USPS was estimated to decrease from 796.2 million gasoline gallon equivalents (GGE) in 2007 to 718.0 GGE in 2011.  Decreases in fuel consumption are largely due to the USPS working about 44,000 electric, compressed natural gas, liquid propane gas, and biodiesel vehicles into their fleet of more than 165,776 owned/leased vehicles.  Postal vehicles are estimated to travel a total of 1.2 billion miles each year to reach the increasing number of delivery points.

Despite USPS' best efforts to reduce transportation fleet petroleum use, there has been an increase because of the greater number of delivery points and mileage required to reach them.  What effect would ending Saturday deliveries have on transportation fleet petroleum use?  Let's just say optimistically that the 2011 transportation fleet petro use would decrease by 1/6 because zero miles would be driven on Saturdays.  The 154 million GGE of 2011 could be reduced to 128 million GGE by completely eliminating Saturday delivery.  This certainly would be a big step toward the 2015 target of 115 million GGE.  Additional fuel efficiency improvements and alternative fuel vehicles might be able to make up the difference in the remaining time. 

Back on Track,
Triple E.