The United States Postal Service announced plans last week to discontinue regular mail service on Saturdays as of Aug. 5. Packages will continue to be delivered and post office boxes will continue to be serviced, however. David Walton, a spokesman for the Tennessee District of the United States Postal Service, told the Review last week that the change should save the USPS, which reportedly lost $1.3 billion in the first quarter of 2013, as much as $2 billion a year. “We have been discussing dropping a day for a couple of years now, and Saturday has the lowest mail volume of any day throughout the week,” Walton noted. “One-third of businesses are also closed on Saturday, so it just makes sense to choose that as a non-delivery day. Our carriers won’t have to go to every single address, that should save us over $ 2 billion annually,” he estimated. Walton said home mail delivery will continue normally Monday-Friday, and packages will still be delivered Monday-Saturday. He said post office boxes will continue to receive mail on Saturdays, and encouraged people with important Saturday mail should rent a box. “Even though letter mail is not being delivered to homes on Saturday, if you have a P.O. box you’ll still get all of your mail Monday-Saturday,” Walton stressed. “That’s packages and letters. If someone needs their letters badly, we highly encourage them to rent a P.O. box.” Walton said the effect on current postal jobs had not yet been determined. “It’s too early to tell what kind of impact this will have on our employees. We are working with the unions and the labor associations to minimize any impact to employees.”