Daily or Alternate-Day Delivery? The Letter Volume at Which Running the Round Every Day Stops Paying

Halving delivery frequency is the first economy every struggling postal operator considers, and it is usually debated as ideology — service versus savings. This paper prices it. A round costs a stated USD 64 each day it runs; a letter-day of delay is priced at USD 0.05. Under daily delivery a letter waits half a day on average; under alternate-day delivery, a full day, while the round's fixed cost halves. The two patterns cost the same at 1280 letters per day. Below that volume alternate-day wins — at 500 letters a day it saves USD 19.5 daily — and above it daily delivery is the cheaper pattern in total cost (at 4000 letters a day, USD 164.0 against USD 232.0), because the delay bill, which grows with volume, overtakes the round saving, which does not. Frequency cuts are therefore a small-volume economy, and imposing them on busy rounds destroys more value than it saves. SIMULATED, NOT MEASURED.