Postal Boss: No 3-Day Delivery

Despite McKinsey's recommendation that mail delivery be cut to three-days a week, the Postmaster General says that's not going to happen.

Image: U.S. Postal Service

U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General John Potter said he is not willing to consider a consultant’s recommendation to cut mail delivery to three days a week.

“I think that would negatively impact our business," Potter said in a Bloomberg Radio interview Wednesday. “If we change delivery from six to three [days], the ubiquity of our product and the value would be diminished.”

The Postal Service is hoping to reduce mail delivery from six days to five, although it would need Congressional approval to make the change.

It is also seeking a change in regulations that would allow it to alter its required prepayments of employee retiree health care benefits.

“The key points of our strategy will all require some legislative action,” Potter told Bloomberg Radio.

In a report released March 3, consulting firm McKinsey & Co. outlined more than 50 options the Postal Service could consider to counter its swelling budget deficit.

Among them was a recommendation to scale back mail delivery to as little as three days a week.

Other suggestions included partnering with more retail locations, dramatically cutting back on the number of post office locations across the country, and developing new products and streams of revenue that piggyback on the growing use of electronic mail.

It is already considering the closure of 160 post office locations.

The Postal Service posted a $3.8 billion fiscal 2009 loss and has forecast its fiscal 2010 loss will grow to $7.8 billion.