Mail dropped
By April Baumgarten, BHG News Service
In rain, sleet, hail and snow the mail will go. Just not on Saturdays. The popular saying won’t apply to weekend mail delivery starting Aug. 5, the United States Postal Service announced last week. The national company will not deliver mail to residents on Saturdays. The cutback should save it $2 billion annually, USPS spokesman Peter Nowacki. USPS has made no secret of shifting to a five-day delivery schedule for mail and packages. The announcement comes after a “strong growth” in package delivery, according to a press release. It also comes after the agency reported in November a $15.9 billion loss last year. That’s more than triple what it lost in 2011 at $5.1 billion. The company also planned to give a six-month notice before it stopped delivering mail. The National Newspaper Association and North Dakota Newspaper Association strongly oppose the change. NDNA officials have asked U.S Sens. John Hoeven and Heidi Heitkamp, and U.S. Rep. Kevin Cramer to speak up against the change. “It could have a devastating effect on the newspaper industry, we believe,” NDNA Executive Director Roger Bailey said. “We have lots of newspapers that publish on Friday who depend on getting it to their readers on Saturday. That obviously won’t happen.”
