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American Morning
Post Office: `We Deliver, But Not On Saturday'
Aired April 05, 2001 - 11:29 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: The post office may be changing its slogan -- at least it's thinking about this -- "We deliver, but not on Saturday." The U.S. Postal Service is facing $2 billion to $3 billion in projected losses this year, and eliminating Saturday mail delivery is one option that officials are looking at.
J.C. Cliatt has been a mail carrier for 18 years. He knows the business. And he took a second out from his route here in north Atlanta to stop and talk to us. J.C., good morning, thanks for taking the time.
J.C. CLIATT, MAIL CARRIER: How are you doing?
KAGAN: I'm doing OK. Now, ass you are on your route and you are delivering your mail and perhaps running into some of your customers, are you getting feedback about this idea of no Saturday delivery?
CLIATT: Not yet. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but not yet. There's just not that many people talking about it yet.
KAGAN: What about you and your fellow carriers? Have you guys been talking about it?
CLIATT: Well, yes, we have. We think that we should continue to deliver mail on Saturdays because it keeps the mail following better. And I think it would hurt service if we didn't deliver on Saturday.
KAGAN: After all, it wouldn't be less work for you. There would still be just as much mail to deliver on the other five days of the week.
CLIATT: Right. But in order to keep the mail flowing and in order to deliver to our best ability, we need that Saturday also.
KAGAN: How have you noticed -- you have 18 years of doing this -- how have you noticed mail service and what you do, how has it changed over the years?
CLIATT: Well, we went to DPS. And that's Delivers Point Sequence. And that makes you get a lot of volume. Plus it's a lot of business mail that we get.
And mail continues to grow. But services is definitely needed on a Saturday. KAGAN: When it comes down to it, you have a bunch of maybe bureaucrats in Washington trying to figure out how to do this. But you guys are the ones on the frontline actually delivering the mail. You've been doing it 18 years, as we mentioned.
If we gave you a pass for the day or if we kind of set you up with them so you could talk to the people trying to figure this out, what are some good ideas that you might have for them that could include mail service and maybe improve the bottom line? That seems to be the big concern here.
CLIATT: Well, we need a better training program for all the new carriers that comes into the service. We need to train them better. And we definitely can get more people in management to listen to us so that we can do a better service.
KAGAN: J.C., any estimation on how many pieces of mail you will deliver today?
CLIATT: Sorry, I couldn't hear you.
KAGAN: Can, you give us any estimate on how many pieces of mail you personally will deliver today?
OK, well, apparently a little bit of a problem. That's J.C. Cliatt, a mail carrier here in Atlanta for 18 years. Had a chance to talk with him a little bit about this idea of perhaps cutting off delivering on Saturday. He shared with us that he does not think that that's a good idea. Got to keep the service going. J.C. Cliatt, thank you very much.
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