Postal Service's Proposal for 5-Day Delivery in the Mail

(March 30) -- Saturday "snail mail" is one step closer to going the way of the carrier pigeon.

The U.S. Postal Service submitted its "five-day delivery" proposal to regulators today, moving to scrap Saturday mail delivery in an effort to shave $3.1 billion annually from the $238 billion in losses the agency estimates by 2020.

Notably, the proposal was sent to the Postal Regulatory Commission via e-mail.

The plan must earn approval in Congress before its proposed implementation in 2011 as part of a multifaceted effort to keep the Postal Service delivering in the Era of E-mail. In addition to proposed prefunding of pricey retiree benefits and hiking stamp prices, eliminating delivery on Saturday, historically the lightest mail day, is a cost-cutting idea for an agency in crisis. The USPS reported a nearly $7 billion dip in revenue last year.

Postmaster General John E. Potter has said "unprecedented volume declines" are behind the agency's financial struggles. Read: more people going paperless and fewer people sending and receiving traditional mail and relying on post office services.

"Folks are simply not coming into the post office. In lieu of asking Congress for tax dollars, this is how we can do it," USPS spokeswoman Darleen Reid-DeMeo told AOL News of the five-day plan. "We're letting the public know early. ... We want the American public to know why we have to go to five-day delivery."

Reid-DeMeo said the agency has reached out to stakeholders and major mailers about the proposed change, which would keep post offices open on Saturdays and affect only pickup and delivery.

A Washington Post poll released today finds that most Americans -- about 71 percent -- would approve of cutting Saturday service if it means alleviating the Postal Service's financial troubles. More than 40 percent of those polled said they'd prefer eliminating Saturday service to dedicating federal tax dollars to helping the agency. The USPS points to similar results from a USA Today/Gallup poll, conducted earlier in the month, that showed at least 58 percent of customers support five-day delivery.

The Washington Post poll showed, however, that people were less supportive of closing local branches, with 64 percent saying they are opposed.

Unfortunately, some of those branches will close their doors by 2020, as more customers do business with the USPS by buying stamps and other products online at usps.com or at retailers like CVS and Walgreens.

"We're finding that foot traffic in our brick-and-mortar post offices has gone down about 30 percent, a significant drop, just like mail volume," Reid-DeMeo said. "Every town is going to have a main post office. They just may not have a main post office and a station and a branch."

Amid reports of possible layoffs, Reid-DeMeo said there would be rerouting and that the agency could possibly "move people around." But she said the agency hopes to reduce its work force through attrition, noting that 44,000 employees are eligible for retirement.

"We've never laid off anyone," she told AOL News. "I know people are panicked about that, especially post office employees. Our intention is not to lay off anyone with this plan."

The USPS has already frozen executive salaries, shuttered a major processing plant and eliminated positions in its work force. Still, the mail crisis demands solutions, including the possibly impending five-day plan, as a means of snail-mail survival.

"In the long run, the plan will help us to be a leaner and more flexible agency and allow us to continue to deliver to the American public," Reid-DeMeo said.